Methodology
How PopScore works. The math, the noise filter, the data sources.
8 posts
A field guide to project health scores in 2026
Every project on the GitPop radar has a 0-100 health score and a tier (healthy / slow / at_risk / abandoned). Here is how we compute it, what each tier means, and how to use it in due diligence.
A field guide to project maturity tiers in 2026
Every project on the GitPop radar has a 0-100 maturity score and a tier (toy / early / mature / enterprise). Here is how we compute it, what each tier means, and how to use it in due diligence.
The history of the PopScore formula: how we got here
PopScore has been through four major versions since GitPop launched in 2024. Here is the history — what we tried, what worked, and what we had to throw out.
How to evaluate a GitHub project in 5 minutes (the GitPop framework)
A repeatable five-minute framework for evaluating any open-source project on GitHub. Skip the star count, look at contributor diversity, dependency graph, license, and 90-day momentum.
A practical guide to open source licensing in 2026
MIT, Apache-2.0, BSD-3, GPL-3.0, AGPL, BSL — what each license actually means in 2026, when to pick which, and the three license mistakes we see most often in project due-diligence.
The 2026 production-ready checklist for open source projects
Twelve signals that an open-source project is production-ready in 2026. Use this checklist before adopting a project for a serious workload.
Why GitHub stars are a terrible metric (and what to use instead)
GitHub stars reward hype, not quality. We analyzed 50,000 trending projects on the GitPop radar to show why stars mislead — and which three metrics actually predict production usage.
What is PopScore? The math behind GitHub's only velocity-aware trend score
PopScore weights commits and PRs above raw stars, and applies a noise penalty for awesome-* lists. Here's the formula, the rationale, and the data sources.