We mostly agree! I should elaborate.

I'd say what you and the others did was research, not implementation. Your results were solutions to the same problem, not variations of the same recipe. What you did is important but separate from what's concerned me.

A recipe of Chlumský's— the msdfgen utility— is widely used, but only has one producer. I'm just saying that that's a liability. Like, imagine if HarfBuzz was the only text shaper, and was maintained by one person.