I would phrase it like this: It is a good enough alternative to the reference implementation and Luke has sufficient reputational history to run a project like this.

There are good social reasons for its existence. At least one good alternative should always exist. Otherwise we risk getting into a "king in the high castle" situation where the developers do primarily what they want, and they very rarely try to communicate with normal users. That said, Luke also has weird stances on many things are that does not help at all.