I think the attitude is different. Projects with a homepage outside of github I tend to treat as black boxes. Projects that are just up there with a README, I t

I think the attitude is different. Projects with a homepage outside of github I tend to treat as black boxes. Projects that are just up there with a README, I tend to take as someone saying "here's this thing I built, use the source if you'd like." The difference with the latter is that I do not expect support or a community. I consider the plugins and gems that are like that to be under my ownership, they are just saving me the time of writing the majority of the code. While I do have to fork and monkeypatch a lot, that is still faster than DIY. When effort to "make right" exceeds the effort to rewrite, I'll rewrite, simple as that. I think the "just put it out there" attitude is useful. We should also be better as a community when we give up on a project, though the metrics that gh provides give good ideas about the activity and life around something. If anything, reading through 10 implementations of slugs lets you know the pros and cons that you may not have considered before you go on and roll your own. In short: in ruby community, libraries are starting points, not black boxes.