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just think of how many years of effort many of those dots represent. and how OS development is such a small fraction of overall software development. and how much of that software just evaporated from the world because it was no longer useful.

feels sort of like monkeys at typewriters sometimes

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True, but the same statement could be made about most software (including perhaps 95% of apps on Android and iOS app stores). Perhaps mobile apps provide some form of return on investment through mobile advertising, although it's probably not much.

Anyway, there are people that are perfectly willing to toil away on their labor of love because it's a hobby for them and they get some form of satisfaction from it all.

> just evaporated from the world because it was no longer useful.

If lessons were learned, either what is good/useful/supportable or what not good/useful/supportable then it's not wasted work

Plan9 is long gone but still provided good ideas that Linux and other use to this day. I'm sure some ideas have been taken from BeOS etc etc

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