This cheats the other users (like me or you) -- if we are looking at the project's star count, you are likely trying to judge project's popularity and get a measure of how many people like it.

And dae's star count is basically a lie - it does not represent how many people liked it, but rather how many people had found annoying bugs in it. Someone who is forced to use dae and hates it would still need to star it. And as you said, other projects who don't have this practice are in disadvantage.

(And that's why I have no problem with things like CLAs, or requiring details bug reports: they are not user-visible and they don't mess with global rating.)