Having a popular open source project is mostly a matter of luck. Most people that use Node don't use it because don't use Node because it's a brilliant platform

Having a popular open source project is mostly a matter of luck. Most people that use Node don't use it because don't use Node because it's a brilliant platform. People mostly use Node because everyone else uses Node. Once you're popular, most of the popularity is due to being popular. There's very little a developer can do to make their a "popular".