It seems certain that much of the success of Unix follows from the readability, modifiability, and portability of its software.

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.

I'm still uncertain about the language declaration syntax.

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.

C++ and Java, say, are presumably growing faster than plain C, but I bet C will still be around.

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

Steve Jobs has said that Xwindows is brain-damamged and will disappear in two years. He got it half-right.