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

submitted 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

72 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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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[–] [email protected] 18 points 4 days ago (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago

This happened in the earlier years of Android. Developers were FOSS until people helped them get the app to a polished state. Then close it and charge money. Make a big push to promote the paid app.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Can you give examples of this? What is the coat to the end user? Hardware, IT-services (VPS, and alike?) or like map providers using OSM data?

[–] [email protected] 9 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Isn't this kinda what the controversy around the ElastiSearch licensing change was about? I think people have had similar frustrations with HashiCorp software, but I don't know the details.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 days ago (1 children)

In my opinion that was a little different. The enterprise was using the software basically, contributing nothing but selling services around it. The licence was meant to force them to help out monetarily from what they were making off it. But rather than do that Mason forked it and now have to support their own imp with their own devs.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago

Which is just as good in my opinion if I am understanding the situation correctly.