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This is a very important dimension to consider when making technical decisions. I've never been able to find an easy way to assess this risk, beyond hearsay and word-of-mouth.

Is anyone aware of an easier way to assess these longer-term risks of a piece of technology? Things like API stability, community strength and responsiveness, backwards compatibility, upgrade paths, etc.

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A large margin of safety / margin for error / margin for refactoring is the correct way to deal with uncertainty of any kind.

Humans are very poor at reasoning about low probability events that have serious consequences, i.e. large earthquakes with very long return periods.

For this reason, it's difficult to assess the 'risk' of external code because risk management processes don't work very well when high uncertainty is involved.

If you decide to use external code that has a high degree of uncertainty, just make sure to have a generous allowance of time/money/effort for future problems.

It's hard. 1) Gain experience. 2) Talk to tech veterans and journeymen. 3) Look to other communities for lessons.

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