With utmost respect, I respond to each point you mention below.
The JS of 2009 was an entirely different language
from the JS Netscape originally created. Plus
Netscape's web server was an evolutionary dead end
and a proprietary closed-source product.
The reason I cited Netscape's server was to unequivocally show that NodeJS did not introduce JavaScript to "a new environment" as the GP stated. Why previous efforts failed to gain traction or if it is even a good idea to use JavaScript to define server-side logic is left as an exercise to the reader.
Node was in part influenced by CommonJS, which
tried to unify the various competing but
relatively obscure (mostly non-browser) JS
environments. To say that it learned nothing
from the history of SSJS (or JS environments
in general) is, frankly, wrong.
It would seem we have differing perspectives of history. CommonJS was started in 2009[1], the same year as NodeJS[2]. The lessons of history I implied regarded attempts to use JavaScript as a server-side solution over the past 20-ish years. While you make the distinction:
Node lets you write application servers,
Netscape's SSJS effectively was more like
Rhino-meets-JSP or maybe GWT (i.e. the heavy
lifting was apparently implemented in Java,
not JS).
I suggest that this is irrelevant, as the details of
how the JavaScript logic is executed is orthogonal from the fact that systems such as these use JavaScript to define behaviour itself. The fact remains that there have been more than one previous project/offering/effort which had JavaScript as a key component. IMHO, it behooves interested parties to do whatever postmortem examinations possible before committing to the same or significantly similar path.
1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CommonJS
2 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Node.js