It's a solution to the trust problem. Without consensus on what good, stable software looks like -- there are zero trustworthy review sites anymore (cf Amazon

It's a solution to the trust problem. Without consensus on what good, stable software looks like -- there are zero trustworthy review sites anymore (cf Amazon reviews) -- the only metrics we really have left are (a) backed by large corporation, and (b) is newer than the alternatives. The other problems like environment drift and maintainer interest are secondary to the trust problem.