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I had to chuckle as I read the post. I, too, suffer from occasional bouts of jealousy when I see "competitor" JS canvas libraries get some sunshine and appreciation in various venues for features that I think (in my own very opinionated opinion, of course) my library does better[1]. But this state of affairs is, as other commenters have pointed out, entirely my fault. For a library or product to gain traction in the target market, it needs three things: easy access, awareness of its existence, and good support. For a library like mine, this boils down to the following: + Easy access - it's my responsibility to make the library easy for other developers to find (GitHub, website), add to their projects (npm/yarn, compatibility with bundlers, etc), use in their code (well documented API, TS support, etc), and cause them minimal problems within the wider project (plays nicely with frameworks, doesn't destroy page efficiency, doesn't break the toolchain, etc). This is the work I enjoy and spend a lot of non-dev time doing. + Awareness of its existence - which is marketing. Either I have to spend a lot of time telling people about my library and (more importantly) telling them how my library solves their problems. Or I have to find "champions" - people who use, and like using, the library so much that they will go out and promote it for me. Or I can spend money on getting proper marketing help, adverts, etc ... which is not going to happen. + Good support - beyond documentation, I need to be willing to either spend time helping people resolve issues and misunderstandings they have with the library, or I need to build a community of people happy to help me do that work. Sadly I am not the sort of person who enjoys the high level of social engagement that's needed to build that community. So, yeah ... it is my fault that the competitors get the glory. But then again they deserve their place in the sunshine because they've done the work I've not been willing to engage with. As for the occasional bouts of jealousy? They remind me that I'm still human, that I still care. Which is a Good Thing! [1] I keep track of what the competitors are up to mainly by following their repos on GitHub. Most of the issues people raise seem to be about TypeScript errors and breaking updates. But sometimes I'll see someone ask for a feature they want added to a library, and I'll find myself thinking: "my library does that already!" and I'll get a little shiver of jealousy. Like this request for a "Transformation box for texts" made in the Fabric.js repo - https://github.com/fabricjs/fabric.js/issues/8195 |