AT&T Plan9 announcement

[serge@euler.Berkeley.EDU serge@euler.Berkeley.EDU]

``Mr. Footi, a clarification please.''
--Marcy Rodes, Married with Children.
:-)

Lawrence.V.Cipriani@att.com
>To:	9fans
>Date:	Tue, 18 Jul 1995 21:23:52 -0400
>Subject: AT&T Plan 9 announcement
>
>"Plan 9 is not in competition with UNIX or Windows," said Paul 
>Fillinich, marketing manager for AT&T Software Solutions.

dmr@plan9.att.com:
>To:      9fans@cse.psu.edu
>Date:    Sun, 9 Apr 1995 00:23:34 -0400
>Subject: Plan 9 encumbrance
>
>Even the bureaucracy is aware that we're competing not only with Linux
>and BSDI and other low-cost BSD-derived systems, but also with
>commercial Unix, OS/2, and Windows of all styles.

Given that AT&T Plan9 announcement also later says:

>source code, is available for $350. [...]
>only the manuals, may be ordered separately for $125.  

I guess ``the wienies won'' --Geraldo, upon being dismissed from 20/20 :-)

Still, I would hate to see Plan9 / Brazil die out because of this.
I.e. who's going to shell out $350 when you can get Linux (and even OSF
Mach) source for free and Windose (:-) for ~$70 (and Sun's Spring for
~$70)?  For comparison purposes, for $350 you can get a cheapo 386
system that will run Plan9.  (Even $125 for manuals seems a little
steep. Hm ... I wonder if you can get just the sources without the
manuals for $350 - $125 = $225? 1/2 :-)

The binary only PC distribution is certainly very nice, but it's limited
in the number of hardware that it supports (besides being PC-only 1/2
:-), as evidenced by the letters in this mailing list.  If the source
was (more) widely / easily available we could have lots of people
working on extending it to support other platforms.  (Witness the
success of Linux, GNU, *BSD, etc.)  Is there any possibility of this
happening?  Even something like, e.g. some Motif reselling companies
contributing $1 (or $5?) for each sold product to the development of a
free Motif clone would be nice.  (Hm ... I wonder how VSTa is doing?)
This would be somewhat like, e.g. Sun's (ex?) policy of creating /
throwing new business over the wall so that the total volume increases
and both they and everyone else (seller and buyer alike) benefit.

Plan9: overact or die trying.
:-) :-) :-)