Was the VM a failure?

[Koen G]

I stand by my point that the VM wasn't a success story that was ever repeated. And we must ask ourselves why.

Different definitions of success make this discussion a bit tricky.

A secret, one-off mission can be described as a great success if all goals were reached. The mission was successful in the sense that it did what it needed to do. But nobody will repeat it and not many people will even know about it.

But one can also know artistic or commercial success by reaching a wide audience and being influential. You seem to be thinking about this type of success.

In both cases though, we can only speak of success by first assuming goals. Did the makers intend to...

• make money? Maybe they sold it for big bucks to a rich Frenchman who had it rebound and added the month names. 
  
• hide information for use within a limited group? Maybe it did function like this for a while, until the group was no longer functional or the MS was no longer needed.  
  
• serve as an exercise in [meditation? glossolalia? writing? memorization? book making?] for the people who made it? In that case, the making itself was the goal.
  

No matter which initial goal we take, we can think of a scenario where the makers were successful. Only if we assume that the goal was to make a new tradition, the makers obviously failed. But out of all the possible goals, that one is certainly the least likely.

With something like the VM, we must assume that it was not meant for the ages, but rather to function in its immediate surroundings. To educate specific people of a community known to the makers, in the makers' "here and now". So sell for a lot of money to benefit the makers immediately. To trick a pretentious book snob the makers knew. 

They almost definitely weren't thinking about making something for the ages.