While I was suspecting something like this is taking place, it's quite sad to actually have solid evidence.
I was actually doing my own kind-of research in hopes of starting an open-source-focused start-up. While I know stars aren't the definitive indicator of the project quality or popularity, it certainly helps build a good image, as it's one of the easiest public stats potential users can track. Also, unless gained in nefarious manners, like described in the post, they also roughly align with the project's current stage.
I was exploring how other start-up projects gain their stars, mainly by aligning the visible bumps in their star count to various events related to the project.
Pretty much all official start-up or seed funding announcements I've seen happened in the range of 300~3000 stars, mostly at ~1000. The main drivers behind the star bumps of the projects were e.g. viral HN or Reddit posts, PH launch, or getting to GitHub Trending.
For some projects however, I couldn't find any events related to the stars increases which, considering this post, makes the possibility of them being bought higher than 0.
I was actually doing my own kind-of research in hopes of starting an open-source-focused start-up. While I know stars aren't the definitive indicator of the project quality or popularity, it certainly helps build a good image, as it's one of the easiest public stats potential users can track. Also, unless gained in nefarious manners, like described in the post, they also roughly align with the project's current stage.
I was exploring how other start-up projects gain their stars, mainly by aligning the visible bumps in their star count to various events related to the project.
Pretty much all official start-up or seed funding announcements I've seen happened in the range of 300~3000 stars, mostly at ~1000. The main drivers behind the star bumps of the projects were e.g. viral HN or Reddit posts, PH launch, or getting to GitHub Trending.
For some projects however, I couldn't find any events related to the stars increases which, considering this post, makes the possibility of them being bought higher than 0.