On one end, I really like the open source movement;
Having said that, I can't do anything but blame it for the slow pace of computer systems research. My reasoning is that the OS does not sell anymore (partly due to FOSS movement) and thus research computing environments hardly come out of the labs for use in production.
We are forever stuck with Unix's interpretation of what an OS could be, and there is very little compulsion/motivation/incentive (can't think of the correct word) to explore. People who do explore (example at MS research or Later Bell labs, remains in the labs)
This is not a new phenomenon, though; I was considering an OS research PhD all the way back in 2000, in the research group that brought out Nemesis ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nemesis_(operating_system) ) - but even back then I could see that the compatibility issue was a colossal barrier. Back then we thought Windows had won the desktop and the UNIX-like OSs would remain in a niche.
The only thing that disrupted that was mobile. First Symbian, then iOS and Android. Sufficiently different use case that backwards compatibility was rendered irrelevant.
I guess thus is the same kind of evilution that s lotnpf technology goes through as it is adopted. Eventually, standards evolve (lane sizes, driving sides, electrical voltages and current limits etc...) and because they are adopted so widely, any change becomes almost impossible. C and UNIX look like they are going to be that standard for the computing world for the next few centuries.
Having said that, I can't do anything but blame it for the slow pace of computer systems research. My reasoning is that the OS does not sell anymore (partly due to FOSS movement) and thus research computing environments hardly come out of the labs for use in production.
We are forever stuck with Unix's interpretation of what an OS could be, and there is very little compulsion/motivation/incentive (can't think of the correct word) to explore. People who do explore (example at MS research or Later Bell labs, remains in the labs)