You wouldn’t even necessarily need git/github to implement a new system! Agree on a standard file name like .githeartbeat containing a timestamp. Every few months (or w/e), active maintainers could push a commit to update the timestamp.
It sounds like a good idea, but I'm afraid it may be a nightmare for packagers (like the ones providing packages on GNU/linux distros), as they see updates to upstream only to realize they are just pings and don't need to be repackaged.
It wouldn't be that often, though. And maybe they would actually love to have such heartbeat. I would love to hear a packager on that.
Personally I'm a fan of zero touch where I as a developer submit my code repo to app store like play store, apple app store, flathub or something and they just build it using a standard definition that the store defines and make it available on the store. Kind of feels like a lot of effort for every distro to look at every change in every application...
