Happens loads of times. There is some in-built human condition that folk basically see a thing that they could improve but then decide to go off and build their own moon-base rather than work on someone elses project.
In my experience, project maintainers are frequently uninterested in changes to their project, especially if those changes are a significant departure from their current vision or if it involves pivoting away from tools that they like. You're often expected to make years of contributions to the project to earn the rapport to bring significant suggestions before the maintainers. It's often just easier to 'build your own moonbase' instead of politicking.
Just a couple days ago, the curl maintainer published a blog post about why he wouldn't rewrite curl in Rust and a big part of the reason was that he and the other maintainers weren't good at it and weren't the right people to lead a project that used it--he said that he encouraged other people to start their own project in Rust. But then when people follow that advise, they're chided for not contributing to the more established project! To be clear, I'm not a "just rewrite it in Rust" guy, but I think people underestimate the difficulty and frustration involved in petitioning an established project to make the reforms necessary for significant improvements.
Except that this is not as good as the original by their own admittance. If they had collaborated they could likely get more done in the same amount of time. (not twice as much, but more)
Maybe this is a better design than the other projects. Maybe people cannot get along and so they are forced to fork. There are many other good reasons to not contribute to an existing project. However we should always look at skepticism on such claims: it is easy to start you own project and you are in control so the amount of work you get done is higher. However working together, while it makes everyone slower normally results in many more features and higher quality code over the long term.
So please when you have an itch technology can solve look to see if you can contribute to someone else's project first. It won't be as fun, but the world and you will be better for it.
