[seanconaty]

> The end result is that developers contribute to open source in a vacuum; they develop, hoping — but never knowing — whether their library is being used at-large.

Is popularity is the main reason behind releasing and maintaining open source software?

[purpleturtle]

Unlike celebrity culture, popularity in the open source world translates to actual impact on the web. As an author of a popular library, your code plays a direct part in how other developers structure their codebase, and -- depending on the library -- the end user experience.

And, yeah, impact/change/popularity (whatever you want to call it) is certainly a main reason behind releasing and maintaining open source software. Perhaps other dominant reasons include giving users differently opionionated alternatives that better suit their workflow, advancing the technical know-how of a field, and simply experimenting for expressiveness' sake.

[gedrap]

It's not the main reason, but it's natural to be curious if someone is using code you spent so much time on, and there's nothing wrong or anti-open source about that.

[pjmlp]

Didn't you get the memo?

Software development on the 21st century is pop culture driven.

What counts is whatever everyone else is using this week on "top of the charts", not how technical good it is.