[bluejekyll]

> If you think “download numbers” (or open source, or being in GitHub) is a good metric for measuring reliability, it means you haven’t really worked in any such field.

I never have worked in such a field, and you're comments about certification, etc, are definitely things I will accept as true. Getting any support of new technology in any space is hard, and of course takes time.

But, I will say that "download numbers" where there is obvious sustained usage of a project is a stand-in for understanding if something is seeing real-world usage. I don't claim that it show stability, only that if it's usage is high and the number of issues on the project are not growing under that strain then you can begin to get a picture of it's stability.

When you talk about formal proofs, certification, etc. Those are different mechanisms for validating that, but generally requires substantial amounts of money to be done.