These days on GitHub I come across projects like CodeEdit and AFFiNE which have the disclaimer I’ve seen one too many times. It’s usually preceded by a warning emoji and mentions that it’s super alpha and not ready for production use. Browsing through public projects, it starts to become funny how common it is.

Some are clones of existing products that end up getting lots of stars on GitHub for no reason other than being the open source alternative of that product. I bet 98% of people don’t even go as far as cloning the repo, let alone running it. Maybe glancing at the name, the README, and the live demo, if there is one. What do the stars really mean, then?

Some projects are doomed to remain in alpha but provide a hopeful glimpse at a brighter future.

There’s no conclusion here, just my thoughts while browsing GitHub.