Because it is too easily replaced with something else [1].
I'd say it's the exact same reason why almost nobody can make a living wage off self-publishing app store apps. There's always an endless stream of volunteers who will clone your idea for next to nothing.
Plus the homepage doesn't explain at all WHY one would want to use this. So from a marketing point of view, you need to better demonstrate your value, i.e. what makes Babel useful and unique.
[1] for example Google's Traceur:
https://github.com/google/traceur-compiler
In Babel is used by millions, so why are we running out of money?google
traceur-compiler
JavaScript2013–2021
google / traceur-compiler · Archived
traceur-compiler
Traceur is a JavaScript.next-to-JavaScript-of-today compiler
27Distinct people
28Mentions
1Explicit recommenders
8.1KGitHub stars
What to know before exploring
What it is
Traceur is a JavaScript.next-to-JavaScript-of-today compiler
GitHub
Where it is used
No documented product use was verified in the last source check.
What people are saying
For anyone interested in trying some of this stuff out (which I highly recommend, because a lot of the new stuff in ES6 is really great), Google has an awesome tool called…
kevincennis used a recommendation phrase. One indexed comment matches. This is a phrase match, not a verdict.
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Also in these discussions
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This week on Hacker News
Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 12:54:37 PM UTC.
No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.
Mentions over time
HN mentions by year28 dated mentions
Observed mentions: 2013-04-01 06:30:58 UTC to 2021-05-11 06:51:27 UTC.
Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.
View mention counts and date ranges
| Period | Start (UTC) | End (exclusive, UTC) | Mentions | Submissions | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2013 | 2013-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 9 | 1 | 8 |
| 2014 | 2014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 12 | 2 | 10 |
| 2015 | 2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 3 | 1 | 2 |
| 2016 | 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 1 | 1 |
| 2017 | 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2018 | 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2019 | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2020 | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2021 | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
From the project README
An excerpt from the repository, fetched Nov 13, 2026.
Read the project’s introduction
What is Traceur?
Traceur is a JavaScript.next-to-JavaScript-of-today compiler that allows you to
use features from the future today. Traceur supports ES6 as well as some experimental ES.next features.
Traceur's goal is to inform the design
of new JavaScript features which are only valuable if they allow you to write
better code. Traceur allows you to try out new and proposed
language features
today, helping you say what you mean in your code while informing the standards process.
JavaScript's evolution needs your input.
Try out the
new language features.
Tell us
how they work for you and what's still causing you to use more boilerplate and
"design patterns" than you prefer.
What now? What can Traceur do for me?
Read the
Getting Started
page to get up and running. You can use some language features right now and
even try it out in your browser
here.
Just type in some code and see what Traceur produces. For an idea of what is
available and what we have in the pipeline, see the
Language Features
page.
The JSConf 2011 presentation of Traceur describes the goals of the project and
what it can do today. Some documentation is on the wiki on this site.
Extra demos are in the source repository.
We also presented Traceur at NodeConf 2011. The video is
available on YouTube.
Questions, suggestions, and comments can be directed to the
discussion group.
Read the full README on GitHubWhat Hacker News says
28 sourcesHere is one issue where I saw some comments on the broken Map implementation: https://github.com/google/traceur-compiler/issues/1810
Admittedly, this is an older browser at this point (Safari 11 formally shipped yesterday), but I remember it biting a workplace I was at 2 1/2 years ago & we had to polyfill Map and Set. I believe this was fixed in Safari 9.
I would like to report it on GitHub, but unfortunately I think it would violate my employment contract until I complete the process to get approval to do open source work.
In React 16Traceur – A JavaScript.next-to-JavaScript-of-today compiler
26 points · Open discussionI found the supposed plagiarism and I'm not seeing it. From what I can see, it's all original code and while what you made is thoroughly useful and certainly took a lot of work, it's not exactly uncommon. You've created a very comprehensive, plugin-ready, Mac-specific bash config. Yours handles numerous cases, this person wrote their own handling a smaller set of cases that works better for them. Traceur[0] was one of the first major JavaScript transpilers. Does that mean Babel[1] is plagiarism?
[0] https://github.com/google/traceur-compiler
[1] https://babeljs.io/
In Ask HN: Plagiarism on GitHub – What to do?The Closure Compiler supports compiling ES6 code already, and can also do transpilation down to ES3/ES5. [1][2]
Google also has the Traceur Compiler which does transpilation of new JS features (ES6, ES7 proposals, and a couple of features that aren't in either) into older versions. [3]
[1]: https://github.com/google/closure-compiler/wiki/Releases#oct...
[2]: https://github.com/google/closure-compiler/wiki/ECMAScript6#... (might be a bit out of date, since there have been releases since that document was last edited)
[3]: https://github.com/google/traceur-compiler
In Must-See JavaScript Dev ToolsThere is also Google's Traceur, which "is a JavaScript.next-to-JavaScript-of-today compiler that allows you to use features from the future today"
https://github.com/google/traceur-compiler
In ES6 starterkitYou are absolutely right when it comes to using ECMAScript 6 natively. It will officially become a standard in mid 2015. By then modern browsers should have implemented most of it, but it will be years until legacy browsers go away. It feels to me that (for most projects) we can just now rely on ECMAScript 5 being there everywhere.
On the other hand, there are already a few decent solutions for transpiling ECMAScript 6 to ES5 [1]:
* Traceur (there are Traceur-based plugins for Grunt, Gulp, browserify, webpack, etc.): https://github.com/google/traceur-compiler
* 6to5: https://6to5.org/
* es6-transpiler.js: https://github.com/termi/es6-transpiler
Using those tools results in a workflow that is much like using CoffeeScript.
[1] http://www.2ality.com/2014/08/es6-today.html
In ECMAScript 6: new OOP features besides classesUsing .ec6 as file extension for ECMA 6 source codes
1 points · Open discussion> Angular 2.0 relies heavily on ES6 features and syntax which are not yet supported in any browser
Which is why part of the project is a compiler which compiles ES6 (actually, an ES6 superset) to ES5, which is supported by every browser.
https://github.com/google/traceur-compiler
In Angular 2 CoreFWIW, I believe they are using traceur-compiler. https://github.com/google/traceur-compiler
If you look at this page here https://github.com/google/traceur-compiler/wiki/LanguageFeat...
You can see annotations in the "experimental" features list.
In AtScript PrimerHow is this different than the already well established Traceur compiler? https://github.com/google/traceur-compiler
In ESnext – Tomorrow’s JavaScript syntax todayAccording to http://kangax.github.io/compat-table/es6/, absolutely no browsers support JavaScript Modules yet; only the Traceur compiler[1] and EchoJS compiler[2] do. I would not call this feature “crucially important” yet.
[1] https://github.com/google/traceur-compiler
[2] https://github.com/toshok/echo-js
In JavaScript ModulesShowing the 15 most recent of 28 sources. Enable JavaScript to search and browse every indexed mention.