It also worked because researchers had long-term employment with ample research funding and long periods of time to think outside of the rapid-pace of today's c

It also worked because researchers had long-term employment with ample research funding and long periods of time to think outside of the rapid-pace of today's culture in academic and industry labs. Projects such as UNIX, C, C++, and S were built by a small set of bright people who had a significant portion of their time to devote to a single project. They did user-testing, reimplementing, and even had the luxury of starting-over from scratch several times to get the first stable prototype ready. Something like the proposed model doesn't work if they are only giving someone "1 year"; they'll spend a good chunk of that time looking for the next job or source of funding.