How did UNIX lose out to NT, when market forces coerced Microsoft to include a shoddy copycat version of UNIX named GNU/Linux inside of NT? That is almost the ultimate punishment for Dave "Gettabyte" Cutler, the father of NT and a notorious UNIX hater.
I think that some version of this dichotomy has existed at nearly every point of computer history where technology allowed it, and that is surprisingly far back!