>> podman, buildah

> Still not anywhere near as popular as Docker. Although technically they're far better than Docker, and if anyone is using them, it's for that reason.

NIH packages are generally expected to be less popular, yes. They have some technical merit, though in my opinion that's mostly trade-offs rather than one being strictly better than the other. I would be surprised if everybody using them is using them because of technical merit as opposed to it being pushed by the distro.