Transparency
OSSDrop is a curated home for open-source tools. We think rankings should be earned and every mechanic should be visible— so here is exactly how each number and feature works, with no black boxes. These figures are read live from the site’s current settings.
Tools are ranked by real engagement: upvotes and comments from signed-in accounts. An upvote counts as 1 point; a comment counts as 2, because it’s a higher-effort signal.
Recency matters: every point decays as it ages (a gravity of 1.5), so tools getting attention now rise, and nothing sits on top forever.
GitHub stars never drive a rank.They’re only used as a tiebreaker when engagement is equal — a million-star project with no activity here will not outrank an actively-used one.
The tabs: Today / This week / This month show total engagement in that window; Newest is by date added; Trending is live momentum. Today is the default.
Karma is your reputation on OSSDrop. You get +1 karma each time someone upvotes one of your tools, and it moves with upvotes on your comments.
It can’t be bought, gifted, or set by an admin— if we handed it out it would stop meaning anything. Your own tool counts as a single upvote (like Reddit), capped at one per tool, so you can’t inflate it.
OD points are a spendable currency you earn by contributing and spend on boosts. Two firm rules: OD is never sold for money, and it never affects rankings.
How you earn OD
Admins can also grant OD as a labeled promo or reward — that’s a gift, separate from earned karma.
You can spend OD to boost your own tool for a fixed block. A boosted tool shows a “Boosted” label and appears in a rotating spotlight — but it does not change any ranking score. The earned order underneath is untouched.
Current boost settings
A promoted or pinned tool sits in a rotating mid-list slot — never #1 — is always labeled “Promoted”, and never alters the honest ranking beneath it.
Paid promotion is a planned way to help sustain the project. If and when it exists, it will be clearly labeled and kept strictly separate from earned ranking — we won’t sell your way to the top.
You sign in with GitHub or Google, and we request only your name, email, and avatar.
Any risk? It’s minimal — the worst we could ever show is your public name and avatar, which are already public.
Some tools carry a “Curated”badge — they were added by OSSDrop (for example, from our public list), not by the maker. They’re neutral listings, clearly marked so no one is falsely credited.
Maintain one of them? Hit “Claim this tool.”An admin verifies it’s really you (we compare your GitHub to the repo owner), then you become the owner and can edit the listing.
Listing is free, always. Use Drop a tool— paste a repository link and we auto-fetch the stars, license, language, and icon. We check the repo resolves and isn’t archived, then it goes live on your chosen launch day after a quick review.
Prefer git? Open a pull request to the public OSSDrop/OSSDrop list — the underlying data is public-domain (CC0) and machine-readable.