I believe you that there are practical advantages; often the more popular ones have several problems that are insufficient for what I am trying to do, but sometimes just that there are advantages and disadvantages of different ones and the ones that I like are different. This is true of file formats, character sets, protocols, etc as well as of programs.
> Not every good tool will become popular, and many popular tools are not good.
Yes. (In my opinion, there are also specific kind of features that it has or lacks, that I might think is good even if it is uncommon or bad even if it is common, but there are also features that are good as well as common, or that are bad as well as uncommon.) (However, there is also the consideration of: something might be good for some purpose but bad for others, and might be used for many of the purposes that it is bad for even though there is clearly something better.)
> Not every good tool will become popular, and many popular tools are not good.
Yes. (In my opinion, there are also specific kind of features that it has or lacks, that I might think is good even if it is uncommon or bad even if it is common, but there are also features that are good as well as common, or that are bad as well as uncommon.) (However, there is also the consideration of: something might be good for some purpose but bad for others, and might be used for many of the purposes that it is bad for even though there is clearly something better.)