Open source/selfhost projects 100% keep track of how many people star a repo, what MRs are submitted, and even usage/install data.
I feel it is important to make a distinction here, though:
GitHub, the for-profit, non-FOSS, Microsoft-owned platform keeps track of the ‘stars of a repo’, not the open-source self-host projects themselves. Somebody hosts their repo forge on Codeberg, sr.ht, their own infrastructure or even GitLab? There’s generally very little to no algorithmic number-crunching involved. Same for MR/PRs.
Additionally - from my knowledge - very few fully FOSS programs have extensive usage/install telemetry, and even fewer opt-out versions. Tracking which couldn’t be disabled I’ve essentially never heard of in that space, because every time someone does go in that direction the public reaction is usually very strong (see e.g. Audacity).
NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip 2 hours ago
That is a distinction without difference. It doesn’t matter what mechanism is used to collect those metrics. The fact is they are there
And, at a glance: Forgejo definitely has stars and watches and fork tracking as well
Which is all fundamentally the supply and demand aspects of consumerism. It is the idea that people can identify what there is a high demand for and work to provide a supply. Which is not at all a bad thing and extends far beyond capitalism.
But it goes back to the previous poster’s comments about how they don’t like that netflix analyzes everything they do and greenlights projects based on that. That extends FAR beyond netflix and well into even open source projects.