Another reason GitHub stars are a garbage metric, they are actively gamed and exploited.
If you get a request for measuring #oss growth with them: push back hard.
@linux_mclinuxface So stupid that they're used for rankings. I use stars to flag projects I want to come back to visit, and let the authors know I'm interested. Not to play stupid recommendation algorithm games.
@dalias I've heard bonkers stories of people selecting dependencies based on number of stars.That should alarm basically anyone.
OTOH: there is a disease of being data driven to the point that bigco leadership people can't operate without a number that indicates up-and-to-the-right. Consequently, they latch their jaws into anything that looks like that type of metric. Then people start playing games...
No metrics is a _feature_ of OSS, not a bug.
From my perspective, no-star means "I'm ready to clone and use this now, seems mature, no need to mark it to follow development later."
A project I star is more likely to be not-ready-for-primetime or have integration difficulties I haven't yet worked out.