I’ve been experimenting with building very small personal tools to help myself stay focused. Recently I wrote a minimal terminal‑based Pomodoro timer because I was struggling to start my side projects and wanted something simple that just works.
While building it, I realized I also need to learn how to distribute small projects properly. Right now I’m trying a simple approach: closed‑source, pay‑what‑you‑want, no DRM, and users just get the right to use the tool.
Since I’m still learning how licensing, expectations and “fairness” work for tiny solo projects, I’m curious how other developers see this model. Is this a reasonable way to distribute small tools? What would you expect as a user or developer?
For context, here’s the project I’m experimenting with.
Just to understand you better — what counts as ‘AI‑authored’ for you?
Ah, so it is. Now I understand why you’re not putting the code up front on the github project page for everyone to see.
For me, that means something where the code is obviously AI authored.
I’m not anti-AI, I use it all the time when coding. But when the human responsible for that code, and there must always be one, doesn’t understand every single line of that code and why it’s there, then it’s unwise to use that code. LLMs can churn out perfectly good code within their current scope, but they cannot (yet) produce cohesive and maintainable code that doesn’t grow out of scope. And when an experienced coder sits down and reviews that code, there will be a high WTF/minute ratio.
For me the closed‑source vs source‑available vs open-source choice is mainly about learning distribution models, not about AI‑authored code. I wrote and understand the code — I just wanted to test a model that allows distribution and PWYW, which open‑source doesn’t really support.