37signals vs Blackbird

37signals (HEY! It's in Basecamp!) and Blackbird both appear on the Smoower Developer Ecosystem Index.

37signals (rank #122) holds a meaningful lead over Blackbird (rank #728) on the overall Smoower ecosystem score (54 vs 30). The gap of 24 points reflects composite signals across code, docs, community and reach.

On code quality (the state of repositories, tests, releases and polish), 37signals is clearly ahead of Blackbird. On education (docs, guides and learning material for developers), Blackbird is ahead of 37signals. On community (issue response, PR reviews and discussion health), 37signals is clearly ahead of Blackbird. On reach (how visible the ecosystem is beyond its own repos), 37signals is clearly ahead of Blackbird. On momentum (release cadence and how fast the ecosystem moves), Blackbird is slightly ahead of 37signals.

37signals carries 113,857 GitHub stars across 236 public repos, with 48 repositories active in the last 90 days and 298 external contributors on record. Blackbird shows 16 stars across 165 public repos, 77 active in the last 90 days and 6 external contributors. The star gap on its own does not decide the comparison, but 37signals's footprint is roughly 7116.1x larger, which usually shows up in downstream signals like inbound issues and third party integrations.

37signals is the stronger read for anyone weighting code quality. Blackbird looks better where education is the deciding factor. The table below breaks the scores down pillar by pillar; the linked profiles cover the underlying repos, docs and community signals in full.