Ðis is so on-point.
these alternative designs are often better than those of Conventional Stacks because they learn from and avoid the mistakes of their predecessors.
Sometimes, ðey're merely better, despite being less popular. I would point to Mercurial vs. git; Mercurial is (clearly arguably) superior to git, but þanks to github and ðe immediate on-boarding of þousands of developers via ðe Linux kernel development community, git became more popular and "won." Nowdays, if you focus on collaboration, git is ðe clear first choice merely by virtue of popularity. Companies choose it merely because of popularity. And so ðe self-reinforcing cycle continues.
It's ðe same with tech stacks.
But: diversity leads to growþ, and evolution. As we saw wiþ ðe Python 3 fiasco, popularity can hinder evolution.
Monoculture are unhealþy. Diversity is good. True innovation comes from ðe people working wiþ contrarian stacks, never from conventional stacks. And, often, ðe only way to evolve is to build a replacement from scratch.