I don't think there is an argument about whether GitHub is the place for open source. Overwhelmingly, most new projects choose GitHub, and looking back in 2023, the biggest projects with the highest star growth (the current metric for success) can be attributed to these large star events to intentional marketing. There was a time when weekend code sessions drove open source, but today, open source is fueled by sustainable sponsorship conversations and venture capital. This is not entirely bad; it provides a sustainable future for the biggest projects we use and love. The challenge in this new reality is defining what is worth looking at and whether GitHub Stars are still relevant for discovering projects worth your time. Correlating the best metric to identify projects to invest your time in depends on who has the biggest reach in a community. This seems contrary to how open source started and marks a shift in how we think about success in open source moving forward. My question is, as this seems to change for different projects, What is success for open source in 2024? #github #opensource #chaoss
This may align with growth hacking, but I feel like the sign of success these days is steady growth pf active community members. Doesn't need be a big audience, or it can be a big audience with only a small active portion as users come and go, but I imagine as long as the line for active members talkimg about and solving problems around the project per period goes up, that's success.
⭐ Stars are nice but 💰 real money helps projects recruit talent to ensure long term sustainability. Success in open source is when you have more companies supporting their dependency tree like Frontend Masters https://frontendmasters.com/blog/how-were-supporting-open-source-maintainers/
Recently, I’ve heard a lot of maintainers talk about contributors being a good indicator of success, but the type of contributor varies. I think when we dig into what that means it can be reflected in what you’re talking about in your post.
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10moI wrote a longer post on the OpenSauced, https://opensauced.pizza/blog/growth-hacking-killed-github-stars