I feel like it didn't really fail because of the technical aspect, but rather a business one. Once such a tool is successful, there will be lock-in and/or slig

I feel like it didn't really fail because of the technical aspect, but rather a business one. Once such a tool is successful, there will be lock-in and/or slightly incompatible competitors. You, as a user, become dependent on single company, which is almost always abused in the end. Both factors are driven by the complexity of the systems that were built with the tool (the complexity hides in the tool, which made these systems easy to write in the first place). A similar thing IMHO happened to Unix, Common Lisp.. the only way to avoid the fate is to establish and maintain a common standard, but that means yielding the power (it's not particularly appealing business model) and is a subject to the tragedy of the commons, and embrace/extend/extinguish.