Over 3.1 million fake "stars" on GitHub projects used to boost rankings
Over 3.1 million fake "stars" on GitHub projects used to boost rankings
This doesn't surprise me at all... Just like bots in games. Selling a service that benefits another. Its shady, but definitely believable.
Also, what if this is an actual viable way to "market" for an open source project?
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I am not a programmer. But I have been using github as an end user for years, downloading programs I like and whatnot. Today I realized there are stars on github. Literally never even noticed.
The stars are more important when you're a developer. It indicates interest in the project, and when it's a library you might want to use that translates into how well maintained it might be and what level of official and unofficial support you might get from it.
Other key things to look at are how often are they doing releases and committing changes, how long bugs are left open, if pull requests sit there forever without being merged in etc.
And if the developers were to give up on the project, how likely it would be for someone to fork it and continue.
An experienced developer could easily step in. The hold back is getting compensated for the effort rather than being forced to turn tricks on the local street corner (aka work a job).
This is why devs are walking away.
Companies offering jobs to maintainers rather than directing funding at them is nonsense. Gov'ts and companies will wake up as cracks start snowballing in their tech stack.
Ya, that's a really good point as well.
If you’re trying to peddle malware then it’s a way to fake popularity
That's unfair. Throwing out FUD doesn't make it true.
Why be in a rush to judge? Might wanna watch some projects which have used this tactic.
Might be legitimate projects are willing to do whatever to attract eye balls.
Just for shiats and giggles, keep an open mind.
I was pointing out a use case
Yeah, this is a pretty good gauge of what an honest star rating should represent.
Tbh I never look at stars, but do at prs and issues
Closed PRs and Closed issues?
What if it's a side project with 1 star, 0 issues (because no one made any) and no PRs because no ones done work on it?
More so if spme software had dozens or hundreds of open issues/PRs for months that never get looked at I'll look elsewhere
Don't want unstable dependencies
Really does depend on what we are talking about. Some random software that is not critical? Sure. Some system breaking library that would take down my servers in case of malfunction? No bueno.
Throwing out FUD.
The stars reflect the marketing effort put in. Has no correlation to the software quality or whether it's critical or not.
Initially, the stats will reflect amount of marketing effort put into the project.
The marketing will attract both users and a flow of issues and PRs.
I've done zero marketing for my packages. And it shows ;-)