Re: [9fans] Software philosophy

[Keith Gibbs <k@pixelheresy.com>]

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Come, come, Vester. Please don’t introduce false premises under the guise of calling them out. I never said that. 9front as the official Plan 9 would be pretty absurd.

I never said it was *the* development branch. It is *a* development branch. I could even imagine that it may in fact be the most popular and active for those wishing to develop new software on (with 9miller being very popular as well). 

If fact, I noted other projects... other Plan 9s as well in my initial and my response to Lucio. I was merely pointing out that Lucio in the past and in the OAuth thread keeps introducing the idea that the P9F should impose order and wall off everything but 9legacy [which he implies is the official one], even to the point of arguing in the past that 9front developers should port changes that are “good for the community” or some such to the “actual” Plan 9. 

Instea the charter for P9F's language was written to be inclusive. Why? Because historically this mailing list/community has been host to discussion for 9legacy, 9atom, 9front, p9p, etc. Even Inferno or Harvey come up semi-regularly. As such, it is not outside the general understanding of “Plan 9” as encompassing a wider berth. Although many of the P9F folk are contributors to 9legacy, I think they know that the community is broader and want all of it to be “Plan 9”.

So in the end, I apologise if it was unclear or confusing that I suggested to Lucio that 9front was to be "Plan 9 from Bell Labs Version 5”. It was a joke and everything I wrote following that should have made that very clear that I was arguing *specifically* for a plurality of Plan 9s rather than a single one [which Lucio was advocating for]. Lucio seems to hate 9front specifically for some reason, so the initial statement was intended as tongue in cheek.

Both 9legacy and 9front serve important niche functions within Plan 9 space, but neither *are* Plan 9. There is only one “official” Plan 9 and that was last updated January 2015. 9legacy positions itself as patch set on top of V4, but wants to maintain it in such a way that V4 will always function as V4. 9legacy maintains that it is not a fork. 9front says explicitly that it is a fork of V4 and a continuation based on it’s core principles. Both have fed into each other’s ecosystems. Hell, 9legacy’s site even says to run Plan 9 from Bell Labs rather than 9legacy if possible, which is kind of funny. And NIX is still active, last I heard, but currently has a closed community, not to mention Harvey and Jeanne.

So my main point was that we have a plurality and we *should* continue to have a plurality. Much like Lucio would find 9front as being blessed as “the official one true Plan 9” repugnant, so too would others re: 9legacy. A fair swathe of the Plan 9 enthusiast community want to build and evolve and a fair swathe want to preserve and maintain, with some incremental quality of life tweaks added in, and *both are totally valid*.

-pixelheresy

> On 18. Aug 2021, at 13.13, vic.thacker@fastmail.fm wrote:
> 
> Starting from a false premise does not help. 9front is not a development branch of Plan 9. Plan 9 is Plan 9. 9front is 9front. 9front is an open-source fork or derivation of Plan 9.  
> 
> Trying to make 9front the new and official Plan 9 does seem absurd. I'm not sure why there is a strong need for validation. 9front does not need official recognition. Let 9front be what it is. It can exist independent of the Plan 9 name. 
> 
> Sincerely,
> Vester 
> 

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