- Is it popular? (is it known by the community, does it have a large number of stars on github, large number of downloads etc.)
- Is it of sufficient quality? (is it well tested etc.)
- Is it well documented?
- Are there multiple active maintainers?
- How will you manage the dependency should it fall in to abandonment?
- Can you easily write a wrapper for the dependency? (ports and adapters and all that jazz)
- Is it quicker to write the functionality than it would be to write a wrapper? (if so, consider rolling your own?)
- Does it have a small footprint? (i.e. doesn't bring in loads of other dependencies itself)