They differ only in content and the nature of the restrictions. They're all license agreements.
The GPL is not binding, nor is it an agreement. You are free to ignore it. The problem with EULAs is that they try to impose extra restrictions on you simply by using it. The GPL does not - rather, it grants extra freedoms (which, incidentally, is where the word "free" comes in) that wouldn't otherwise be allowed under copyright law.
Well okay, the Firefox source might be free software, but it's still correct to say that Firefox (i.e., the binary that people install) isn't free software. This is just like what happened with Google Chrome until they fixed their licence - sure, someone could compile the source code and install/distribute that, and that version would be free software. But that doesn't mean the binary version is.
This is important - for example, it wouldn't be possible for Firefox to include source taken from other GPL projects. That would be possible if Firefox was free software (it's one of the whole points of it, after all). However, I believe they can't release a binary with extra restrictions imposed on it.
One side is a scientific theory with overwhelming evidence to support it. The other is a made up story, with no evidence, or even evidence against it.
There's only one major theory. Indeed, there's only one theory.
If your argument is that neither has absolute 100% proof, well okay then: we don't have 100% absolute proof that America exists. I guess by your logic, British schools should also teach the "theory" that America doesn't exist, and instead the area there is filled up with islands made of jelly? Nobody has conclusive proof of either one, so why not teach both major theories?
It is not something that just happened in the past - but even if it did, that doesn't mean we can't determine what happened. By your logic, determining who committed a particular crime is not scientific. And does this mean that overwhelming evidence that a particular person committed the crime, should be treated on equal grounds with a made up story about someone else who did it - a story with no evidence, and even evidence to disprove it? Of course not.
Whether people like it or not, there ARE two major theories that both have evidence that can point to it, and plenty of credible scientists who think it happened that way.
There's only one scientific theory full stop. And which scientists support creationism?
If a young, bright, enterprising student is presented with two possible options
What possible options? "On the one hand, we have facts supported by overwhelming amounts of evidence. On the other hand, we can close our eyes and pretend that's all bullcrap, and instead believe in this fairy tale that I made up"?
No one is saying that we shouldn't teach science in science.
However, if a growing number of children have creationist beliefs (of whatever religion), that are ingrained into them (part of Reiss's point is that this makes it hard to correct them, like a simple misconception), the question is how do we tackle this? Reiss gives his suggestion, for which he is for some reason ridiculed. So what's your suggestion?
Yes, it is a fair point that there is no need to debunk creationism anymore than we debunk belief in fairies. On the other hand, belief in fairies either isn't widespread among fairies, or it doesn't affect their accept of scientific facts.
So either the Guardian misread, or they are up to mischief.
This news was misreported in a large number of media sites - it's unclear who started it, but it's rather sad to see them all copy and pasting the same false story off of each other, none of them citing sources or giving the full context of original quotes. Not one of them thought to ask the Royal Society themselves for clarification on whether they really thought this.
It's even sadder to see the misreporting continued when the Royal Society have stated their position, and that the media reporting on this is wrong.
Why? Do we want to give the impression that leading scientists support creationism? That's just the thing that creationists would love people to believe!
I've even downloaded the mp3 that's linked and I don't hear what the Atheists are getting uptight about.
I'm an atheist, I don't see this is an atheist thing. It's just bad reporting.
(It's one thing for the media to misrepresent them, but it's rather poor for Slashdot to post this, when it's old news, and already debunked by the Royal Society, and without even linking to their statement. But I guess I shouldn't be surprised...)
The Royal Society is opposed to creationism being taught as science. Some media reports have misrepresented the views of Professor Michael Reiss, Director of Education at the Society expressed in a speech yesterday.
Professor Reiss has issued the following clarification. "Some of my comments about the teaching of creationism have been misinterpreted as suggesting that creationism should be taught in science classes. Creationism has no scientific basis. However, when young people ask questions about creationism in science classes, teachers need to be able to explain to them why evolution and the Big Bang are scientific theories but they should also take the time to explain how science works and why creationism has no scientific basis. I have referred to science teachers discussing creationism as a worldview'; this is not the same as lending it any scientific credibility."
The society remains committed to the teaching of evolution as the best explanation for the history of life on earth. This position was highlighted in the Interacademy Panel statement on the teaching of evolution issued in June 2006.
There might be valid criticisms against using the term "worldview", and maybe he did or didn't explain himself poorly. But this whole thing looks to be a media misreporting.
It's also just the sort of myth that plays into creationist hands - I can hear it now: "Even leading scientists of the Royal Society support teaching creationism in schools". It's not true.
I apologise, I misread your OP - however, whilst linking to one's personal website on one's CV is not something I'd do, and would hope people would be very wary of doing it, I don't think it's the same thing as explicitly bringing it up in the interview. Some people tend to put random other information on their CV, that they wouldn't bring up unless asked (e.g., hobbies). If someone links to their personal homepage, I wouldn't be surprised to find information about his personal life. Now on the one hand, if you were hiring him for a job that involved doing deals with customers, you might worry he sticks his personal homepage link on his business cards and email signatures. If not, that's not an issue, and there is the argument that he's being open about who he is.
I'm still curious about the answers to my question - would you have turned him down if you'd decided to hire him, but then saw the webpage?
Same idea, except it's different. The example you describe would be just plain confusing if nothing else - why would he bring up such talk? It's a case where he explicitly goes out of his way to tell you.
However, handing you a URL for his online CV is perfectly straightforward. That this URL might be his personal website is perfectly reasonable. That his personal website might, on other pages, have such information about his personal life, like photos, is not unsurprising. The only way to avoid this would have to go out of his way, and explicitly avoid doing this (e.g., by creating a brand new site just for his CV). So it's the complete opposite of what you describe.
If you want real life analogies, then it wouldn't be "during the interview" (just as these photos weren't on his CV, I presume?) - it would be going to his address that he gave you, spying on what happens, and then noting that on the weekend, he has a few friends round for a drink.
OOI, is there a feasible trajectory that would put the body into the sun, using the planets' gravity? If he and the "30 other people" are wrong, I'm sure we'd be curious to know how this can actually be done.
The kid didn't get the job, but after we decided we didn't want to make him an offer, we took a look at his page. It was almost exclusively pictures of him drinking, hanging out in bars and fraternities, etc. Just confirmed our decision.
No, it doesn't confirm your decision - a single anecdote hardly proves correlation, let alone causation. If you'd already made up your mind not to hire him, it's easy to pick on all sorts of pointless things ("it then turned out he had a Slashdot account - just confirmed our decision!").
The more interesting question is, what if you decided you wanted to hire him, and then saw his web page. Would you have turned him down?
If yes, I say more fool you. It may be stupid to show potential employers such URLs, given that they make such judgements - OTOH, that someone might go out to "bars" (especially when at young and at University) is hardly shocking or special, and it's equally stupid to judge them on this.
If no, then it's not true that it makes a difference.
I entirely agree. I was also surprised to find I can't do the rather fundamental task of viewing in full screen, unless I pay money. And let's not forget their entry in the Interface Hall of Shame (this was particularly worrying, when good UI is the thing that people claim Apple are good at).
Whatever happened to "It Just Works"? It makes me distrust the "I can't explain why Apple is better, it just is, you just have to try it" mantra when, everytime I do try it, I have these experiences.
Okay, I'll bite - can you show me a YouTube video of such a nature, that YouTube does not take down when it's reported?
As much as I loathe censorship, this isn't actually anything particularly new - YouTube already have a ToS, and already take down all sorts of material that they consider "inappropriate", if someone reports it (including anything that might be 18+ material). Yes, it would be nice if YouTube were more accommodating, but they aren't. Given that, I'm surprised that they ever did allow videos advocating terrorism.
I've seen YouTube take down clips from legally available films (which AFAICT was due to their "violent" nature, rather than copyright violations), as well as a friend who had videos of his child removed within minutes (and, IIRC, when he made a video of himself complaining about this, that was taken down too). If people are going to be up in arms about YouTube censorship, there's a lot more of it going on...
And I'd be pretty pissed too if someone copied things from me and published them as their own work.
I don't think he claimed that his was his own work? This wasn't plagiarism. However, the problem seems to be that his work quoted too much material from the original.
As for control, I don't think the "children" analogy works - who sells off their children for a billion dollars? Sure, one use of copyright is for people to retain privacy (e.g., personal holiday snaps), but if you sold off your children for billions, I don't think people would have sympathy that you no longer had control of your children.
The problem isn't automated trading - people should be free to choose to buy or sell however they like.
The problem is presenting old news as if it happened today. I don't understand why this isn't already covered under libel laws? (Just because it was published via an automated process shouldn't make you exempt from liability - and no, I don't think we should outlaw automated news programs either, as Google and/or Bloomberg can still be held accountable.)
And if they ever actually quit supporting the game, they could patch out DRM or something.
Yeah right.
Even in the absence of evidence either way, that's not good enough if someone is paying out money for it - it's reasonable to want a guarantee beforehand.
And if support is dropped (as happened with various DRM music schemes, at least), the chorus will be "It's your own fault for buying such a game".
Does *anyone* have bad experiences with asking EA for a DRM reset?
If I've bought a game, I don't expect to have to waste time trying to ask someone for permission to run the game that I've already bought.
As well as the point about Nissan being in a country that was Germany's ally, I also think there's a difference between making weapons for the army (which is something that both sides are doing in a war, it's kind of necessary), and helping out with concentration camps.
Indeed, I would consider that sort of thing to be unethical even if it was a German/Japanese company.
And am I missing some fundamental point about the evils of Fanta?
Probably not - because this is exactly the thing that is wrong with patents. They try to have it both ways: that every minor trivial change is seen as something new and patentable, but that patent then applies to every vaguely related concept done in future.
If you are saying that his portable player is different enough to be patented, then it's equally "overly generalized and vague" to say that a modern Ipod is in the same category as his device.
There are all sorts of technological challenges involved in making a small device that can play music, many of those might be worth a patent. It is on this basis that we can decide whether his player is in the same category as music boxes - or Ipods. Did he patent any of the technology? And if so, is this technology present in the Ipod?
Coming up with the idea is the easy part. It's clear why Apple have contacted him, as prior art to show that such an overly broad patent is absurd, but if he thinks this means he instead should be credited and rewarded for the Ipod, he's missed the point just as much as the other patent troll.
(I also note that this story is from the Daily Mail, who would love to play up the lie of "British man actually invented the Ipod, it was foreigners who stole it", so take the story with a huge pinch of salt.)
Get real. I knew exactly one person who had one. Don't get me wrong, it was a great system, but there was just no market for it.
No market, based on your anecdotal evidence? "Get real", as you say. They sold millions, and lasted over a decade, and that was despite Commodore's poor marketing, and then them going bust.
Maybe if the Commodore execs had been total marketing geniuses, they could have stood off the IBM-compatible tsunami (which wiped out a dozen makers of proprietary platforms, including the one I worked for), and withstood Apple. But they faced long odds, and their failure to beat them had little to do with their work ethic.
As is commonly forgotten, Commodore also produced PCs. They were part of that so-called "IBM-compatible tsunami", and could have remained being so if that was the way to survive. But if anything, the problem was not that they didn't put enough investment into their PCs, rather they put too much investment into them, and away from developing the Amiga.
But they ended up with a Mac. Why? Because his publisher used them, and he needed to share files with them. And once they had the system, they found the local Apple users community an essential resourcea resource they wouldn't have had if they'd followed my advice.
The Amiga had the same local users community. I don't think you can compare the results after the fact, when you had no idea how things would have turned out the Amiga route (and if you're going to say there were no Amiga users in your area - well, in mine there was only about 1 Mac user).
What does "self-sustaining" mean? I doubt any OS could survive by itself, without a company developing it (unless open source).
Furthermore, no OS will last forever. Not only does your criterion include classic Mac OS, DOS and Windows 9x (all dead), but at some point in the future, OS X, Linux and even the Windows NT line will be surpassed.
But just because an OS doesn't last forever, doesn't mean that it never achieved any critical mass of users, or that the users didn't see economic sense!
Acorn MOS once dominated home computers in the UK.
I'm in the UK, and no they didn't. They dominated the education market for a while - loads of schools used them. But for home computers, whilst almost everyone seemed to have an Amiga, Acorns were less common than even classic Macs.
Temporarily dominating a small market is not "critical mass".
This statement is meaningless when you see "temporarily" to mean "not forever", and consider the entire home/leisure computer market to be "small"!
Slashdot Mirror
Read the EULA, if you disagree with it, don't use it.
And if I disagree with it, but still want to use it? This is exactly the problem with EUL"A"s.
They differ only in content and the nature of the restrictions. They're all license agreements.
The GPL is not binding, nor is it an agreement. You are free to ignore it. The problem with EULAs is that they try to impose extra restrictions on you simply by using it. The GPL does not - rather, it grants extra freedoms (which, incidentally, is where the word "free" comes in) that wouldn't otherwise be allowed under copyright law.
Well okay, the Firefox source might be free software, but it's still correct to say that Firefox (i.e., the binary that people install) isn't free software. This is just like what happened with Google Chrome until they fixed their licence - sure, someone could compile the source code and install/distribute that, and that version would be free software. But that doesn't mean the binary version is.
This is important - for example, it wouldn't be possible for Firefox to include source taken from other GPL projects. That would be possible if Firefox was free software (it's one of the whole points of it, after all). However, I believe they can't release a binary with extra restrictions imposed on it.
One side is a scientific theory with overwhelming evidence to support it. The other is a made up story, with no evidence, or even evidence against it.
There's only one major theory. Indeed, there's only one theory.
If your argument is that neither has absolute 100% proof, well okay then: we don't have 100% absolute proof that America exists. I guess by your logic, British schools should also teach the "theory" that America doesn't exist, and instead the area there is filled up with islands made of jelly? Nobody has conclusive proof of either one, so why not teach both major theories?
See, you can teach Evolution but only warn for the others.
Which is exactly what's being suggested - teach evolution, and how to convince students not to believe nonsensical ideas like evolution.
See here for the issue of falsifiability: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/evolphil/falsify.html and http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CA/CA211.html .
And evolution has been observed, including speciation: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-speciation.html
It is not something that just happened in the past - but even if it did, that doesn't mean we can't determine what happened. By your logic, determining who committed a particular crime is not scientific. And does this mean that overwhelming evidence that a particular person committed the crime, should be treated on equal grounds with a made up story about someone else who did it - a story with no evidence, and even evidence to disprove it? Of course not.
Whether people like it or not, there ARE two major theories that both have evidence that can point to it, and plenty of credible scientists who think it happened that way.
There's only one scientific theory full stop. And which scientists support creationism?
If a young, bright, enterprising student is presented with two possible options
What possible options? "On the one hand, we have facts supported by overwhelming amounts of evidence. On the other hand, we can close our eyes and pretend that's all bullcrap, and instead believe in this fairy tale that I made up"?
Or.. let's stick to science in science classes.
No one is saying that we shouldn't teach science in science.
However, if a growing number of children have creationist beliefs (of whatever religion), that are ingrained into them (part of Reiss's point is that this makes it hard to correct them, like a simple misconception), the question is how do we tackle this? Reiss gives his suggestion, for which he is for some reason ridiculed. So what's your suggestion?
Yes, it is a fair point that there is no need to debunk creationism anymore than we debunk belief in fairies. On the other hand, belief in fairies either isn't widespread among fairies, or it doesn't affect their accept of scientific facts.
So either the Guardian misread, or they are up to mischief.
This news was misreported in a large number of media sites - it's unclear who started it, but it's rather sad to see them all copy and pasting the same false story off of each other, none of them citing sources or giving the full context of original quotes. Not one of them thought to ask the Royal Society themselves for clarification on whether they really thought this.
It's even sadder to see the misreporting continued when the Royal Society have stated their position, and that the media reporting on this is wrong.
Why? Do we want to give the impression that leading scientists support creationism? That's just the thing that creationists would love people to believe!
I've even downloaded the mp3 that's linked and I don't hear what the Atheists are getting uptight about.
I'm an atheist, I don't see this is an atheist thing. It's just bad reporting.
So why is the Royal Society bothering?
They're not: http://royalsociety.org/news.asp?id=8004
(It's one thing for the media to misrepresent them, but it's rather poor for Slashdot to post this, when it's old news, and already debunked by the Royal Society, and without even linking to their statement. But I guess I shouldn't be surprised...)
Yes, it is what he had in mind: http://royalsociety.org/news.asp?id=8004 :
The Royal Society is opposed to creationism being taught as science. Some media reports have misrepresented the views of Professor Michael Reiss, Director of Education at the Society expressed in a speech yesterday.
Professor Reiss has issued the following clarification. "Some of my comments about the teaching of creationism have been misinterpreted as suggesting that creationism should be taught in science classes. Creationism has no scientific basis. However, when young people ask questions about creationism in science classes, teachers need to be able to explain to them why evolution and the Big Bang are scientific theories but they should also take the time to explain how science works and why creationism has no scientific basis. I have referred to science teachers discussing creationism as a worldview'; this is not the same as lending it any scientific credibility."
The society remains committed to the teaching of evolution as the best explanation for the history of life on earth. This position was highlighted in the Interacademy Panel statement on the teaching of evolution issued in June 2006.
There might be valid criticisms against using the term "worldview", and maybe he did or didn't explain himself poorly. But this whole thing looks to be a media misreporting.
It's also just the sort of myth that plays into creationist hands - I can hear it now: "Even leading scientists of the Royal Society support teaching creationism in schools". It's not true.
I apologise, I misread your OP - however, whilst linking to one's personal website on one's CV is not something I'd do, and would hope people would be very wary of doing it, I don't think it's the same thing as explicitly bringing it up in the interview. Some people tend to put random other information on their CV, that they wouldn't bring up unless asked (e.g., hobbies). If someone links to their personal homepage, I wouldn't be surprised to find information about his personal life. Now on the one hand, if you were hiring him for a job that involved doing deals with customers, you might worry he sticks his personal homepage link on his business cards and email signatures. If not, that's not an issue, and there is the argument that he's being open about who he is.
I'm still curious about the answers to my question - would you have turned him down if you'd decided to hire him, but then saw the webpage?
Same idea here.
Same idea, except it's different. The example you describe would be just plain confusing if nothing else - why would he bring up such talk? It's a case where he explicitly goes out of his way to tell you.
However, handing you a URL for his online CV is perfectly straightforward. That this URL might be his personal website is perfectly reasonable. That his personal website might, on other pages, have such information about his personal life, like photos, is not unsurprising. The only way to avoid this would have to go out of his way, and explicitly avoid doing this (e.g., by creating a brand new site just for his CV). So it's the complete opposite of what you describe.
If you want real life analogies, then it wouldn't be "during the interview" (just as these photos weren't on his CV, I presume?) - it would be going to his address that he gave you, spying on what happens, and then noting that on the weekend, he has a few friends round for a drink.
OOI, is there a feasible trajectory that would put the body into the sun, using the planets' gravity? If he and the "30 other people" are wrong, I'm sure we'd be curious to know how this can actually be done.
The kid didn't get the job, but after we decided we didn't want to make him an offer, we took a look at his page. It was almost exclusively pictures of him drinking, hanging out in bars and fraternities, etc. Just confirmed our decision.
No, it doesn't confirm your decision - a single anecdote hardly proves correlation, let alone causation. If you'd already made up your mind not to hire him, it's easy to pick on all sorts of pointless things ("it then turned out he had a Slashdot account - just confirmed our decision!").
The more interesting question is, what if you decided you wanted to hire him, and then saw his web page. Would you have turned him down?
If yes, I say more fool you. It may be stupid to show potential employers such URLs, given that they make such judgements - OTOH, that someone might go out to "bars" (especially when at young and at University) is hardly shocking or special, and it's equally stupid to judge them on this.
If no, then it's not true that it makes a difference.
I entirely agree. I was also surprised to find I can't do the rather fundamental task of viewing in full screen, unless I pay money. And let's not forget their entry in the Interface Hall of Shame (this was particularly worrying, when good UI is the thing that people claim Apple are good at).
Whatever happened to "It Just Works"? It makes me distrust the "I can't explain why Apple is better, it just is, you just have to try it" mantra when, everytime I do try it, I have these experiences.
Okay, I'll bite - can you show me a YouTube video of such a nature, that YouTube does not take down when it's reported?
As much as I loathe censorship, this isn't actually anything particularly new - YouTube already have a ToS, and already take down all sorts of material that they consider "inappropriate", if someone reports it (including anything that might be 18+ material). Yes, it would be nice if YouTube were more accommodating, but they aren't. Given that, I'm surprised that they ever did allow videos advocating terrorism.
I've seen YouTube take down clips from legally available films (which AFAICT was due to their "violent" nature, rather than copyright violations), as well as a friend who had videos of his child removed within minutes (and, IIRC, when he made a video of himself complaining about this, that was taken down too). If people are going to be up in arms about YouTube censorship, there's a lot more of it going on...
Okay then - what predictions does the "theory" of Intelligent Design make? And what would falsify it?
And I'd be pretty pissed too if someone copied things from me and published them as their own work.
I don't think he claimed that his was his own work? This wasn't plagiarism. However, the problem seems to be that his work quoted too much material from the original.
As for control, I don't think the "children" analogy works - who sells off their children for a billion dollars? Sure, one use of copyright is for people to retain privacy (e.g., personal holiday snaps), but if you sold off your children for billions, I don't think people would have sympathy that you no longer had control of your children.
The problem isn't automated trading - people should be free to choose to buy or sell however they like.
The problem is presenting old news as if it happened today. I don't understand why this isn't already covered under libel laws? (Just because it was published via an automated process shouldn't make you exempt from liability - and no, I don't think we should outlaw automated news programs either, as Google and/or Bloomberg can still be held accountable.)
And if they ever actually quit supporting the game, they could patch out DRM or something.
Yeah right.
Even in the absence of evidence either way, that's not good enough if someone is paying out money for it - it's reasonable to want a guarantee beforehand.
And if support is dropped (as happened with various DRM music schemes, at least), the chorus will be "It's your own fault for buying such a game".
Does *anyone* have bad experiences with asking EA for a DRM reset?
If I've bought a game, I don't expect to have to waste time trying to ask someone for permission to run the game that I've already bought.
As well as the point about Nissan being in a country that was Germany's ally, I also think there's a difference between making weapons for the army (which is something that both sides are doing in a war, it's kind of necessary), and helping out with concentration camps.
Indeed, I would consider that sort of thing to be unethical even if it was a German/Japanese company.
And am I missing some fundamental point about the evils of Fanta?
Are you a patent lawyer?
Probably not - because this is exactly the thing that is wrong with patents. They try to have it both ways: that every minor trivial change is seen as something new and patentable, but that patent then applies to every vaguely related concept done in future.
If you are saying that his portable player is different enough to be patented, then it's equally "overly generalized and vague" to say that a modern Ipod is in the same category as his device.
There are all sorts of technological challenges involved in making a small device that can play music, many of those might be worth a patent. It is on this basis that we can decide whether his player is in the same category as music boxes - or Ipods. Did he patent any of the technology? And if so, is this technology present in the Ipod?
Coming up with the idea is the easy part. It's clear why Apple have contacted him, as prior art to show that such an overly broad patent is absurd, but if he thinks this means he instead should be credited and rewarded for the Ipod, he's missed the point just as much as the other patent troll.
(I also note that this story is from the Daily Mail, who would love to play up the lie of "British man actually invented the Ipod, it was foreigners who stole it", so take the story with a huge pinch of salt.)
Get real. I knew exactly one person who had one. Don't get me wrong, it was a great system, but there was just no market for it.
No market, based on your anecdotal evidence? "Get real", as you say. They sold millions, and lasted over a decade, and that was despite Commodore's poor marketing, and then them going bust.
Maybe if the Commodore execs had been total marketing geniuses, they could have stood off the IBM-compatible tsunami (which wiped out a dozen makers of proprietary platforms, including the one I worked for), and withstood Apple. But they faced long odds, and their failure to beat them had little to do with their work ethic.
As is commonly forgotten, Commodore also produced PCs. They were part of that so-called "IBM-compatible tsunami", and could have remained being so if that was the way to survive. But if anything, the problem was not that they didn't put enough investment into their PCs, rather they put too much investment into them, and away from developing the Amiga.
But they ended up with a Mac. Why? Because his publisher used them, and he needed to share files with them. And once they had the system, they found the local Apple users community an essential resourcea resource they wouldn't have had if they'd followed my advice.
The Amiga had the same local users community. I don't think you can compare the results after the fact, when you had no idea how things would have turned out the Amiga route (and if you're going to say there were no Amiga users in your area - well, in mine there was only about 1 Mac user).
What does "self-sustaining" mean? I doubt any OS could survive by itself, without a company developing it (unless open source).
Furthermore, no OS will last forever. Not only does your criterion include classic Mac OS, DOS and Windows 9x (all dead), but at some point in the future, OS X, Linux and even the Windows NT line will be surpassed.
But just because an OS doesn't last forever, doesn't mean that it never achieved any critical mass of users, or that the users didn't see economic sense!
Acorn MOS once dominated home computers in the UK.
I'm in the UK, and no they didn't. They dominated the education market for a while - loads of schools used them. But for home computers, whilst almost everyone seemed to have an Amiga, Acorns were less common than even classic Macs.
Temporarily dominating a small market is not "critical mass".
This statement is meaningless when you see "temporarily" to mean "not forever", and consider the entire home/leisure computer market to be "small"!