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?
Also cybersecurity implications here. Nefarious actors can prop up their evildoings with fake stars and pose as legitimate projects.
my first thought. I usually rely on stars for “trustworthiness” of random projects before running their code.
Ironically an open source project with under 100 stars now seems more trustworthy by default because you can be sure they aren’t lying
Programming never needed these sorts of social media features in the first place. Do you part by getting your projects off of Microsoft’s social media platform used to try to sell you Copilot AI & take a cut of your donations to projects with Sponsors.
For reference, there is codeberg.org, operated by a German nonprofit and based on the open source Forgejo, among other open alternatives.
Federated repo hosting website when?
I almost commented something like “thats extremely overpriced, why dont you set up a raspberry pi to do it for you for free” and then i realized the people who could do that dont need fake stars.
How would the raspberry help? It is accounts needed.
Automation. You replace the user with a script that does everything. Not that hard. Captchas dont really work anymore with ai, and you can pay people to do it for you for a fraction of a cent instead of the absurd prices listed.
Why would it be? Software is good based on it’s use and recommendations from real folk, not *s. Many project not on github
based on its* use
lol, his comment history is full of him correcting people
Yes. You corrected a dyslexic. Well done.
There is a clear situation in Foss( even more in self hosting) where projects are presented as free open source but they are intended to monetize at the end and use the community help for development.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with monetizing FOSS. People gotta eat.
If I understand them correctly, @geography082@lemm.ee’s point is not that it is wrong to monetize FOSS, but rather that companies increasingly develop open source projects for some time, benefiting from unpaid work in the form of contributions and, perhaps most importantly, starving other projects from both such contributions and funding, only to cynically change the license once they establish a position in their respective ecosystem and lock in enough customers. The last significant instance that I remember is Redis’ case, but there seem to be ever more.
What is Twidium’s deal? They are the most expensive and take the longest.
Obviously their stars are the bestest
I think you’re joking, but if their accounts dont get banned immediately and the stars removed a week after you pay, then their stars are actually the bestest
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.
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
