Re: [9fans] unfair?

[presotto@plan9.bell-labs.com]

Not unhappy, just miffed that the staement missed the point.
We port to machines because we need to use those machines, not
because they are popular or readily available in other countries.
The same is true for devices.  Most of our machines (not including
my 100 MHz 486) are pretty new.  We buy about a machine a month
usually to get access to faster CPU's or nicer laptops.  When
we find one that meets the need, we tend to stick with that line.
For example, most of our laptops are IBM's because, even though
we don't understand the soft modems, we love the keyboards and screens.

However, about 100 new models appear every year from the major
manufacturers; IBM, Compaq, Sony, Hitachi, and the various board houses.
Each have their ideosyncracies that have to be ported to.  We definitely
don't have the budget or time to buy one of each and do the port.  In fact,
the company is broke and trying to get those of us that can to go on pension
so that it can afford to pay the rest.

Unfortunately, our needs in hardware don't match what is popular or
most readily available.

One of the reasons (though not the only one) we released Plan 9 was to
get someone else to could cover what we can't.  We're even
worse off with devices.  In general, we port to a new device only when
we need to.  Luckily we've slowly been getting stuff back from the outside
and including it in ships.