In the domain of Open Source software it is important to get an understanding which of the projects is more stable. The reason is, that for a single problem many software packages are available so the user has to select one of them. The problem is, that for the newbie it is very complicated to judge if Ubuntu or Fedora is the better distribution, if firefox or Chrome is the better browser or if gnome or qt is the better GUI environment.
Sure, these problems are discussed in public forums but at the end it depends on the individual user which software package he prefers. What is missing is a measuring unit which determines from an objective base which open source project is recommended.
A possible criteria is the amount of commits per week. This number can be determined from the version control system's logfile. And very important it be drawn into a fancy chart. This allows to compare two projects.