The people working on or using plan9 (front) today are different. Just look at the cat-v harmful section and you'll see the blatant elitism. They will keep the completely flawed concepts like the chorded mouse interface for ever for two reasons:
1. To keep normal people out
2. Because their "gods" (Richie, Pike, Kernighan, ...) can't ever be wrong. Claiming otherwise would be heresy.
Please don't call them gods, and please don't disparage them by the implication of how people talk about them. These are engineers, who made choices, which led to things, which have had huge import. They have feet of clay, like everyone else.
They get cranky with time-wasters. Its not a lifestyle.
Pike's forays into markov-chain fake identities writing in USENET is not perhaps his most shining moment. Its a student prank. He's notorious (by gossip mainly) as being cranky at the accolytes and the adulation. He is said to dislike it. He also is said to dislike people assuming they can debate "the big man" and do a take-down. I am sure Thompson and Ritchie got a shitload of this: I know in fact, because when I chaired a UUG meeting (AUUG) and they were invited guests, they had "minders" in the local Version-8 community who kept people at bay who were being tiresome at the conference socials. Rock stars get this. Its unavoidable.
I don't want to imply any special insight. None of them know me, or would give me the time of day absent some specific reason to engage, and thats fine and normal too. Why should they?
Unlike many others, they made choices which did not lead to them vesting billions and billions of dollars. Many other people made choices to use this bell IPR (which they freely gave away) and constructed huge edifices worth collectively in the Trillions of dollars. Very few people get to have this impact on an economy, let alone worldwide.
Thompson & Ritchie got the presidents medal for a reason.
Joking hyperbole isn't elitism, and the chorded mouse interface was repeatedly shown (with user studies and everything!) to be faster than a keyboard-oriented interface.
1. To keep normal people out
2. Because their "gods" (Richie, Pike, Kernighan, ...) can't ever be wrong. Claiming otherwise would be heresy.