People went on to use JSON for human readable configuration files

Speaking from my own experience, "I could also use this for..." seems to be a ubiquitous programmer affliction. Single-purpose tools that are great at their thing tend to be short-lived unicorns until someone starts sticking other parts onto them for additional functionalities, taking off the horn because it's in the way for some thing or other, and somehow we end up with yet another multi-function-tool that does a lot of things poorly.