> When you say something needs to be commercially successful to be viable, be careful what you're optimizing for. I'm optimizing for survival. If an apple va

> When you say something needs to be commercially successful to be viable, be careful what you're optimizing for. I'm optimizing for survival. If an apple variety has no market, it won't be eaten or enjoyed (so it becomes at best a museum accession), and in the longer term, it won't be grown, propagated or maintained, and because these things don't live forever, and don't propagate themselves, it will disappear. It doesn't have to have a huge market, it can be regional, or highly specialized; it can even be for nursery trees so people can try to grow it in their back yards. But just like anything that has to be produced (that is, that doesn't just persist on its own), it will disappear if no one is willing to pay for it to be produced. So, I'm not making a value judgment about commercial vs other, I'm just saying what it takes to keep something alive.