"Worse is better" never had such a defensibly coherent meaning. There were gestures toward one, enough to fool people, but it mainly amounted to dressed-up sour

"Worse is better" never had such a defensibly coherent meaning. There were gestures toward one, enough to fool people, but it mainly amounted to dressed-up sour grapes: "We would have won if not for those meddling kids!" The fact is, Unix (and then Linux) was strictly better at the things people wanted to do, full stop.