I seem to have long range objectives: I believe that Plan 9 could
make a better virtualisation host than the current choice for the job
and that we ought to sell to the world that it is worth (a) adopting
the Plan 9 paradigm for hosted device drivers and (b) developing all
future physical device drivers to this paradigm.

Putting it in a different way, consider replacing GRUB with 9LOAD as
first step.  Then extend 9LOAD so that it somehow contains the correct
device drivers for the particular platform and use it to boot the next
stage which accesses device drivers Plan 9-style.  Now, if we can get
the hordes of device driver implementors to focus on this approach,
Plan 9's greatest shortcoming (and all other Open Source OSes's)
suddenly disappears.

Sure, there are efficiency considerations to take into account, as
well as the unlikelihood of persuading Lunix developers to switch
allegiances, but a concerted effort to head that way is certainly not
doomed before even starting, at least not unless I'm subconsciously
ignoring some obvious obstacle.

This idea has been bugging me ever since rminnich started making
noises about Xen and I was tempted to look at it.  It bothers me that
Xen is designed very much with Linux as its model, not just its
primary target.  My claim is that a design founded on a Plan 9
foundation would be almost guaranteed to be more successful.  That's
what I call "faith", I suppose.

++L