The future of Plan9?

[Digby Tarvin digbyt@acm.org]

Greg Hudson wrote:
>
>The price in itself is damaging but not fatal; a lot of good OS
>development effort comes out of universities, where finding $350 to
>buy a Plan 9 distribution is easy.  But why would I want to spend my
>time working on a proprietary system when I can work on my pick of
>freely redistributable Unix systems?
>
That is a good point. 

I think $350 is a pretty reasonable price for a supported commercial
operating system, with source. But it is a lot for a proprietary system
which is effectivly unsupported and relies on volunteers for all future
development.

My guess is that the problem is that Bell Labs wouldn't want to make it free
for fear of it becoming competition for Inferno. And they don't want
to do more work on it because they see it as having been superceeded
by Inferno. 

Does anyone feel they can comment on how similar inferno is to plan9?

My fear would be that Bell Labs might split their potential user
base between two different operating systems, and fail to get the
critical mass needed for commercial viability on either.

If it really is just an evolution of plan9, then maybe the best option
would be offer upgrades to Inferno for Plan9 licensees, at a reduced
upgrade price (to cover Bell Labs costs). It couldn't hurt Inferno's
chances to boost the supply of technically knowledgeable poeple
working on it.

Regards,
DigbyT
-- 
Digby R. S. Tarvin                                              digbyt@acm.org
http://www.users.dircon.co.uk/~cthulhu/