[throwaway894345]

My snarky response is that unproven is better than disproven, but my personal feelings aside, make undeniably has marketshare and people aren't likely to switch to something else unless it offers them a more significant improvement than naming/indentation.

[samatman]

I think, maybe, both of these responses are missing the fact that make is not a program, but rather, a number of programs with the same invocation name.

A fork of one of these makes, which did not have the two glaring flaws I refer to, but was otherwise make, would still be, well, make.