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

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.

The True-GNU philosophy is more extreme than I care for, but it certainly laid a foundation for the current scene, as well as providing real software.

I fix things now and then, more often tweak HTML and make scripts to do things.

From an operating system research point of view, Unix is if not dead certainly old stuff, and it's clear that people should be looking beyond it.

For books, I don't read much fiction, but like travel essays and good pop-science.

I'm not a person who particularly had heros when growing up.