Nginx was compelled to move to GitHub [1].

The fact that companies request you to star them on GitHub and the stars can be bought tells you that there is a value in these stars. [2]

Now, some astute reader, who thinks the $1 trillion global advertisement market does not influence them, will also claim that they don't care about GitHub stars.

Well, that's not how the world works.

Fake stars can propel a good project to great.

A lot of people will use GitHub stars as a currency to decide the importance of certain FOSS (or even open-core) projects.

The real lock-in is in GitHub stars [3].

1 - https://blog.nginx.org/blog/nginx-open-source-moves-to-githu...

2 - https://finance.biggo.com/podcast/1c9f14e134095b87

3 - https://ashishb.net/tech/github-stars/