> Second, saying more contributors equates to greater success is a tautology. Or are they suggesting one can simply give strangers commit access and that alone

> Second, saying more contributors equates to greater success is a tautology. Or are they suggesting one can simply give strangers commit access and that alone will determine success? More likely, success and popularity attract contributors. They don't say this. They note that the measure of popularity they're using (stargazer count) is weakly correlated with commits and contributors. > And repos tend to get more stars after a release, so if one releases every hour they'll get the most stars, right? They certainly don't draw that conclusion.