Python, PHP, Ruby: all not American though, right? Do you mean those only got hockey stick growth when they happened to get picked up by the USA ? But then couldn’t the same have happened for ocaml? And if so: why didn’t it, as it supposedly did for the others

Not to mention Linux I guess

Von Rossum moved to the US and Python actually got US government funding pretty early. Lerdorf did PHP in Canada so America. Ruby is kind of the exception being Japanese but it’s pretty niche - nearly as much as Ocaml - and is mostly popular for Rails which was started from Denmark but by someone working for, you guessed it, a US company. Torvald announced Linux on a US usenet list and moved to California soon after.

Ocaml difference is that the core development is done by INRIA, a French public institution and the people in charge had zero interest in moving to the US or chasing the US market.

It’s funny because Ocaml became a bit more popular when people from the UK (Cambridge, JaneStreet) started doing more outreach.