How do you choose modules for your projects? Do you check the health of the communities around them or you just check the technical merits of it? On one hand the community is only indirectly important - all you need is a good module. And if it is technically good module then sure it must have been produced by a healthy community? But on the other hand you can only judge the current technical state of a module while the future of it is usually as important and future is largely dependent on the community supporting it.

So what do you do? Do you check the mailing list archives looking for treatment of submitted patches and bug reports, how newbies are welcomed and how conflicts are resolved?

Update: And yes I do ask this because I was recently bitten by that community side of things. I will not tell what project it was - I don't want to scare some more cool headed people who might join it and improve the situation a bit.

In reply to Choosing modules - community matters or just technical merits? by zby

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