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What is the purpose of two separate META files after creating the distribution?

When creating a new distribution, 2 metafiles are generated. One uses the YAML format, and the other uses JSON. As far as I know, they are used only by other CPAN clients or other applications that want to access the metafile (for any reason). I am trying to understand why the application should have access to both ...

Are these two formats separated for convenience only? that is, developer 1 prefers JSON so it encodes its applications to read the META.json file for distribution, while developer 2 hates JSON and prefers access to the YAML version?

Or, therefore, some technical reason why you will need one client / application that I am missing?

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The reason is that there were two versions of CPAN meta spec , with a later version indicating JSON instead of YAML. YAML files are supported to ensure compatibility with older tools that expect them, but any future metadata features will be added to the JSON version.

David Golden discusses changes from YAML to JSON on his blog

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