I used to fork projects from github when I thought they are useful: even not currently but maybe I need it in the future, so I did a backup of it. However, I didn’t always give the project a star. Graudally, I found this is not a good habit. Currenlty, When I fork a project, I acknowledge it gives me valuable information, I always give this project a star.
The reason behind it is simple: for a repository in github, no matter it belongs to a company or an independent developer, is an outcome of hardworking. Especially for an individual, who mostly sacrifices his own spare time to foster the project and share it freely. You don’t need to pay even one penny to obatin knowledge from others’ IP, and only one click of mouse can express your gratitude and respect for original author. It is not too hard, correct?
Actually, the author can often get motivated by this simple action because it means his endeavour gets a recognization and he earns potential reputation in his career; this may drive he to polish project continuously. The users, including you, will get benefit from a high-qualified project with doubt, so there will be a “win-win” result finally.
Based on above exposition, maybe everyone should give a star for the projects which have helped you. This is the cheapest method to support Free& Open Source Projects, no matter it is software, hardware, and whatever.
People can be tracked this way, and in more dangerous countries, they could even be hurt or killed.
Plenty of people out there would like to show more gratitude to FOSS but are not able to.
On average, I think people could do more, but raising expectations of FOSS users seems counterintuitive.
All this said, I went through my bookmarks and starred some that I use(d).
I’m totally with you here but this should happen automatically in case of forks. in my opinion this is a flaw of “social coding” websites.
even more in regarding the fact that with a fork you say you own alien code now.
with forking there should be automatic tipping actions. E.g. getting a Flattr or some Satoshis for every fork.
as a developer GitHub hearts don’t buy me shit. tip me then if you really need my code.