As someone who has published a few different open source projects as the primary (or sole) contributor, the stars actually do make a difference. It gives me an

As someone who has published a few different open source projects as the primary (or sole) contributor, the stars actually do make a difference. It gives me an extra bit of motivation to maintain or improve the project if I see acknowledgement from others that they've used the it and it helped them. Of course I'd rather see forks and pull requests, but stars are certainly still a motivating factor.