I'm just an observer of Java, and where Microsoft wants to go with C# is too early to tell.

I can't recall any difficulty in making the C language definition completely open - any discussion on the matter tended to mention languages whose inventors tried to keep tight control, and consequent ill fate

UNIX is basically a simple operating system, but you have to be a genius to understand the simplicity.

Any editing, software work, and mail is done in this exported Plan 9

Pretty much everything on the web uses those two things: C and UNIX.

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.

One of the obvious things that went wrong with Multics as a commercial success was just that it was sort of over-engineered in a sense. There was just too much in it.