[wpietri]

The one big mistake I think the Agile people made is not trademarking the term Agile and then enforcing some standards. There was discussion early on, but for some reason it never happened. For Agile it would have been hard, because Agile isn't a methodology on its own; it's an umbrella for a bunch.

Enforcing standards doesn't make it proof against being undermined, but it does make it harder. There's still a tradeoff between being popular and being great that's hard to resolve. Especially since a popular, non-great thing is more likely to get lots of money and attention.

[MartinCron]

That's an interesting idea, but my first instinct is that the cynical developer response to "Agile(tm)" would be even more harsh than to just "Agile".