Releasing mods that don't (on their own) do anything...
 

This is somewhat of a strange query, but here are two situations I'm considering with this thread.

1. I have a framework product which I have written; it dosn't do anything on its own, however provides the common functions required for (currently 1 hopefully more in the future) other plugins. I'd like to encourage other developers to develop plugins for it and intend to release at least 1 myself.

2. I'm considering writing a number of stub plugins mostly for my own benifit, which provide commonly needed functions that often require a number of plugins to achieve eg adding admin permissions. A product thats purpose is solely to provide admin permissions would only be of use to developers.

(1) i'm pretty sure is allowed, the only issue I see people taking is the framework being released separate to any plugins for it.

(2) I'm not sure about; perhaps thay'd be better as articles?

Yes, nothing in (1) breaks any rules as far as I can see - just needs to be clear it wont do anything on its own. Any mods that use it would need to clearly state this so members can decide if they want to install both.

(2) does sound more like articles (you can have attachments in articles).