> (...) and they didn’t need to create/support/release those to achieve their goals.

I'm not sure about that. These framework projects sound like internal projects developed to meet internal needs and improve internal processes. The GraphQL concept and use case in particular, as well as API management tools, is something I've seen reinvented internally by companies to be able to simplify processes. You just hear about GraphQL because Facebook decided to release it publicly. Everyone else has been more or less reinventing the wheel to meet the same needs.