well, most open source projects have a small set of core developers, a larger set of testers (users who discover bugs and report them properly) and larger set o

well, most open source projects have a small set of core developers, a larger set of testers (users who discover bugs and report them properly) and larger set of passive users being more popular will only slighly enlarge the core, and keep it healthy (if a member drops, someone else comes in) popularity is good for OOS projects ... i also disagree that a larger community will increase the bad, again the core developer size will probably remain small enough to work coherently more testers cannot be bad more libraries can never be bad, it will just increase the likeleehood of having good ones happen another reason for languages need for popularity is that it really take a lot of time and effort to master one if you spend years mastering a tools, you sure want it to be popular for more years ... to get a chance to use this knowledge