[9fans] Will I ever use Brazil ?

[9fans] Will I ever use Brazil ?

[okamoto]

I'm not an authority of this issue, and I'd be happy if I could
get Brazil source.  However, Plan 9 could help me to give
my student a clearer scope how to make programs.

When we see text books on unix, sorry Rob, your text is
used for this purpose here,  espetially network programming
and/or X gui programming.  I know how students feel it.
It's too hard to get a whole scope of it.  I agree with it
when I see a good text book by Stevens for networking.

Then, I asked myself that it's really neccessary things to
learn.  When I see Plan 9 first, I felt it's very easy to write
programs on this.  Therefore, I'm thinking now to use it
as our base for developement of our own programs.
Yes, it will take long time and great efforts to pay....

Just one of an opinion why I'm using Plan 9 now.

Kenji

[9fans] Will I ever use Brazil ?

[Digby]

>
>As I've said before on this list, don't read too much into the name
>change.  People here continue to develop and run a lineal descendant
>of Plan 9 second edition; it's called Brazil.  Some things have
>changed, but I doubt that any user of second edition would be shocked,
>stunned and flabbergasted if confronted with Brazil.  Anybody who
>thinks Plan 9 withered up and died inside Bell Labs after the second
>edition release is dreaming.
>
>Did you consider Unix abandoned after the Fifth Edition release?
>after the Sixth Edition release?
>
Forgive my ignorance, but I don't recall seing it explicitly
stated anywhere - I assume the version of Plan 9 I am running
(ie on the 1995 CD-ROM) is second edition, is that correct?

Presumably the name change was a marketing decision, given that
the system was going commercial, the cost of source was being
increased by no small amount, and 'Plan 9' doesn't sound like
a marketable name.

Perhaps we should all just start calling our Plan 9 systems
'Brazil zeroth edition' in order to feel more supported.

It is a pity Lucent can't find a way to make more effective use
of the non-commercial Plan9 users by keeping them current
and producing useful third party code for Brazil.
I would dearly love to see Brazil recognised for the technical
superiority it obviously has over certain more prevalent but
idealogically broken systems.

It seems like such a waste to target only embedded systems.
Or could it be that the thought of taking on the evil empire
is just too daunting.

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

[9fans] Will I ever use Brazil ?

[Frank]

On Mon, 21 Sep 1998 geoff@x.bell-labs.com wrote:

> As I've said before on this list, don't read too much into the name
> change.  People here continue to develop and run a lineal descendant
> of Plan 9 second edition; it's called Brazil.  Some things have
> changed, but I doubt that any user of second edition would be shocked,
> stunned and flabbergasted if confronted with Brazil.  Anybody who
> thinks Plan 9 withered up and died inside Bell Labs after the second
> edition release is dreaming.
> 
> Did you consider Unix abandoned after the Fifth Edition release?
> after the Sixth Edition release

So, Brazil is to Plan 9 as Sixth Edition is to Fifth Edition?

frankg@halcyon.com

[9fans] Will I ever use Brazil ?

[geoff]

As I've said before on this list, don't read too much into the name
change.  People here continue to develop and run a lineal descendant
of Plan 9 second edition; it's called Brazil.  Some things have
changed, but I doubt that any user of second edition would be shocked,
stunned and flabbergasted if confronted with Brazil.  Anybody who
thinks Plan 9 withered up and died inside Bell Labs after the second
edition release is dreaming.

Did you consider Unix abandoned after the Fifth Edition release?
after the Sixth Edition release?

[9fans] Will I ever use Brazil ?

[Frank]

 
>>  1) Plan 9 was distributed after it was abandoned. Universities
>>     had it before development was completely abandoned but I'll
>>     bet the writing was on the wall.
 
> that comment is misleading: brazil might best be regarded as the further
>  development
>  of plan 9 within the labs.  plan 9 was therefore not `abandoned' in
> the sense that was meant.  (it's also easy to underestimate the painful
> effort required to prepare a disribution.)

I meant abandoned as in:
  We are not developing it.
  We are not running it.
  The code may be on the file server, somewere.


frankg@halcyon.com

[9fans] Will I ever use Brazil ?

[forsyth]

>>the more serious problem turned out to be getting anyone outside
>>(including universities)
>>interesting in anything that was `different' (ie, not the Unix of their youth).

come to think of it, i'd change that to `anyone inside [at&t or lucent] or outside'.

[9fans] Will I ever use Brazil ?

[forsyth]

>>  1) Plan 9 was distributed after it was abandoned. Universities 
>>     had it before development was completely abandoned but I'll 
>>     bet the writing was on the wall.

that comment is misleading: brazil might best be regarded as the further development
of plan 9 within the labs.  plan 9 was therefore not `abandoned' in
the sense that was meant.  (it's also easy to underestimate the painful
effort required to prepare a distribution.)
the more serious problem turned out to be getting anyone outside
(including universities)
interesting in anything that was `different' (ie, not the Unix of their youth).
many people seem happiest ftp'ing things and installing them (especially undertraduates);
thus, it's unattractive to be presented with something that requires
a fair amount of (re)programming.

perhaps there was a hope that universities might pick up the system
and work with it in much the same way as original unix, but that
took place in a world of expensive batch and timesharing systems,
not a world full of CDROMs and software on the net, and even
then it was hard work to argue for unix in many universities.
(``we'll just use industry standard vm/370, gcos, rsx11, vms, etc. off the shelf'')

commercial use of plan 9 was complicated (when i got round to look at it)
by being connected in the first instance to someone in the intellectual
property group of at&t (as it then was), and then by the break up of at&t.
i didn't hadn't got too far into it by then, but it was certainly my first impression that
their model of likely clients was mainly that of manufacturing rather
than services (and their idea of `services' seemed closer to the old
timesharing service model).

[9fans] Will I ever use Brazil ?

[Frank]

I can think of two points that cast a dark light on seeing Brazil
anytime soon.

  1) Plan 9 was distributed after it was abandoned. Universities 
     had it before development was completely abandoned but I'll 
     bet the writing was on the wall.

  2) It looks like a lot of code has been shared between Brazil and
     Inferno. 

That said it sure would be nice to receive a response to the
many years of requests for the general status of Brazil.

frankg@halcyon.com

[9fans] Will I ever use Brazil ?

[Jean]

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Some optimistics thoughts about our chances to use Brazil one day:

The Plan 9 user community is small; it lacks coordination. So, things
are moving in Plan 9, but slowly, and in a non-coordinated way that
requires a not small energy to keep your own system in sync with what
is done at many sites by a dozen of persons.  Conclusion: you won't
get very far with Plan 9, it's too hard for a newby to follow two or
three years of 9fans archive to (for example) choose a video card or
compile ssh.

When someone on the mailing list wrote that the Inferno source license
cost 1M$, my opinion was that inferno was not something for me. What's
more, I was convinced that the (supposed) marketing approach of Lucent
(make it something expensive, used to solve hard problems; don't try
to spread it), implied that Brazil would never get out of the Bell
Labs.  I stopped to promote Plan 9 around me, only using it for myself
and marginally using it to convince the students that some things they
thought difficult are actually badly formulated problems.

I was reinforced in the opinion that we would never use Brazil by what
happens on the 9fans mailing list: every six month, someone asks about
the probability of seing Brazil, and doesn't get an answer (at least,
no answer on the mailing list).

My mind changed this summer, when I discovered Lucent's Inferno
university partnership program. I hope that it is a sign that someone
at Lucent realized that Inferno would be more strong on the marketing
side if it disposed of a strong user community.

If I am right, regarding the preceding point, I think we can have some
hope to use Brazil. Someday, someone will realize that distributing
Brazil will only boost Inferno sales. The OS market being what it is
(i.e. microsoft vs free unixes), it won't be too expensive for me.