From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Date: Mon, 14 May 2012 17:15:33 +0200 From: tlaronde@polynum.com To: Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs <9fans@9fans.net> Message-ID: <20120514151533.GA5850@polynum.com> References: <20120514113016.GA2715@polynum.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: User-Agent: Mutt/1.4.2.3i Subject: Re: [9fans] Governance question??? Topicbox-Message-UUID: 8bac52fe-ead7-11e9-9d60-3106f5b1d025 On Mon, May 14, 2012 at 02:32:17PM +0000, Balwinder S Dheeman wrote: > On 05/14/2012 05:00 PM, tlaronde@polynum.com wrote: > > > > Hence, Plan9 is in part, by design, insulated from entropy. > > Plan 9 has never approached Unix in popularity, and has been primarily a > research tool: > > Plan 9 failed simply because it fell short of being a > compelling enough improvement on Unix to displace its ancestor. > Compared to Plan 9, Unix creaks and clanks and has obvious rust > spots, but it gets the job done well enough to hold its > position. There is a lesson here for ambitious system > architects: the most dangerous enemy of a better solution is an > existing codebase that is just good enough. ? Eric S. Raymond[3] > I'm aware of this (and of who...). But this doesn't contradict what I wrote: there are small "systems" out there, used by small communities, that "evolved" from a reliable small codebase to huge beasts, with no improvment made, but only an indefinite amount of "tries" added, loosing the needle in a haystack. Since Plan9 is small and the very spirit is to have, on the user level, one small tool that does the job and no overlapping (a mathematical partition) it is insulated from userland improvment---that go to contrib. And since, on the kernel level, the principles are few, before trying to adapt to a corner case taking the presence of such hacks elsewhere as an excuse to add some more, you have to dive in the whole because even a small piece has impact everywhere. So even when there are short comings, the alternative solution is never a panacea and one finally conclude that the original compromise was a good one if not the best. And seeing how Unices are fighting to try to get things working in an environment not made for it (union fs for example; X having put the network at the wrong articulation point and now trying to put back the servers in the kernels etc.), the "technical merits" have more to do with human inertia than with technicality. Inertia does exist; but "good enough" is more: evolving exceeds my will to work and the material benefits I can expect, and I will loose my position as a "Y system wizard". -- Thierry Laronde http://www.kergis.com/ Key fingerprint = 0FF7 E906 FBAF FE95 FD89 250D 52B1 AE95 6006 F40C