I'm not as convinced as you are that people will simply converge to the better alternative. Sheer inertia from npm activity and accumulated GitHub stars can dis

I'm not as convinced as you are that people will simply converge to the better alternative. Sheer inertia from npm activity and accumulated GitHub stars can disadvantage new, better options from gaining traction because it's not easy for developers to take a risk on a new project that could be abandoned at any time, and because they have to be pretty comfortable with the technology to confidently decide that the current crowd wisdom is wrong - something that may not be the case if the developer is working outside of their area of expertise. standard/standard is particularly interesting because someone who's not completely in their element could easily see "devDependencies": { "standard": "*" } in a package.json or npm install standard in a script, either online or in another project at work, and copy it into a new project along with the rest of the boilerplate common packages they need, not realizing what they've signed up for. This would create the appearance of continuing growth and support for the package even though these users are totally oblivious. It's not clear to me that, with that kind of tailwind, an objectively inferior package couldn't continue to be ubiquitous and never be "converged" out of relevance. Still, I have to agree that the view you describe is a plausible one. If Feross does indeed think that way - which I have no reason to doubt - then that means that he's acting at least in better faith than some are giving him credit for.