Discourse vs SolarWinds

Discourse (The 100% open source discussion platform built for the next decade of the Internet.) and SolarWinds both appear on the Smoower Developer Ecosystem Index.

Discourse (rank #189) holds a modest lead over SolarWinds (rank #569) on the overall Smoower ecosystem score (50 vs 35). The gap of 15 points reflects composite signals across code, docs, community and reach.

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

Discourse carries 55,678 GitHub stars across 620 public repos, with 90 repositories active in the last 90 days and 44 external contributors on record. SolarWinds shows 1,101 stars across 104 public repos, 35 active in the last 90 days and 18 external contributors. The star gap on its own does not decide the comparison, but Discourse's footprint is roughly 50.6x larger, which usually shows up in downstream signals like inbound issues and third party integrations.

Discourse is the stronger read for anyone weighting momentum. SolarWinds looks better where reach 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.