... With Proper Design, The Features Come

C Was Already Implemented On Several Quite Different Machines And Oss, Unix Was Already Being Distributed On The Pdp-11, But The Portability Of The Whole System Was New

Pretty Much Everything On The Web Uses Those Two Things: C And Unix.

A New Release Of Plan 9 Happened In June, And At About The Same Time A New Release Of The Inferno System, Which Began Here, Was Announced By Vita Nuova.

Obviously, The Person Who Had Most Influence On My Career Was Ken Thompson. Unix Was Basically His, Likewise C's Predecessor, Likewise Much Of The Basis Of Plan 9 (though Rob Pike Was The Real Force In Getting It Together). And In The Meantime Ken Created The First Computer Chess Master And Pretty Much Rewrote The Book On Chess Endgames. He Is Quite A Phenomenon.

It's True That Compared With The Scene When Unix Started, Today The Ecological Niches Are Fairly Full, And Fresh New Os Ideas Are Harder To Come By, Or At Least To Propagate.