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Over 3.1 million fake "stars" on GitHub projects used to boost rankings (lemmy.ml)

submitted 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) by minyaen@lemmy.ml to c/opensource@lemmy.ml

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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?

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/over-31-million-fake-stars-on-github-projects-used-to-boost-rankings

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[-] phar@lemmy.ml 25 points 1 week ago

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.

[-] NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world 17 points 1 week ago

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.