[9fans] Kernighan interview (w/ Plan 9 mention)

[9fans] Kernighan interview (w/ Plan 9 mention)

[Leo Caves]

There is an interview with Brian Kernighan at
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~mihaib/kernighan-interview/index.html
where (amongst a number of topics) Plan 9 is mentioned
in the context of the open-source movement. 

Here is a verbatim quote from the article:

"As for Plan 9, I think that's too late, unfortunately. I think Plan 9 was a
great idea and it should've been released under an open-source license when it
was first done, eight years ago, but our legal guardians would not permit it. I
think that they made a grievous mistake. The current open-source license is
definitely worth having but it's not clear whether Plan 9, at least as a
general-purpose operating system, will have much effect except in a relatively
small niche. It has many things going for it which make it valuable in different
areas, particularly where you need a small and highly portable operating system,
but is it going to take over from Linux? Probably not." 

Its difficult to disagree with these remarks.   However, key
is the nature of the niche(s) that Plan 9 will occupy (aside
from system's research - its ideas 
are already propagating into other systems).
Currently, its "popularity" belies its influence (and at this
stage that is probably a good thing).

Arguably, Linux transitioned from its hobbyist niche
to a wider acceptance through a server role.  The effort now
seems to be back to the desktop.

Its difficult to tell in what way Plan 9 might make such a transition.

[9fans] Re: Kernighan interview (w/ Plan 9 mention)

[Conway Yee]

Leo Caves <caves@ysbl.york.ac.uk> writes:
> Arguably, Linux transitioned from its hobbyist niche
> to a wider acceptance through a server role.  The effort now
> seems to be back to the desktop.
> 
> Its difficult to tell in what way Plan 9 might make such a transition.

I would argue that such a transition will likely never take place.

First, there is usually only room for 1 "killer app" in the market and
Linux has already taken up that role.

Second, who can forget the litigation over NET/2?  Anyone who
contributes with the intent of transitioning to a server role will
eventually have to deal with ATT's lawyers.  I believe that the
engineers/scientists at ATT are honorable but are their lawyers?

Third, as it stands, Plan 9's license is hardly appropriate to those
who would run it for serious applications.  Who wants to take the risk
of having ATT own your application?

Conway Yee

[9fans] Re: Kernighan interview (w/ Plan 9 mention)

[Douglas A. Gwyn]

Conway Yee wrote:
> Leo Caves <caves@ysbl.york.ac.uk> writes:
> > Its difficult to tell in what way Plan 9 might make such a transition.
> First, there is usually only room for 1 "killer app" in the market and
> Linux has already taken up that role.

Linux, being free and sufficiently like UNIX, was able to
attract the large army of hobbyist hackers that it seems
to take to support the horrible PC platform with all its
variety of devices, kludges, and lack of decent standards.
If Plan 9 had been there first, it could have played the
role that Linux now has.  (This reminds me of the Blit
marketing that could have competed with X11 but didn't.)

Plan 9 and/or Inferno have one really major feature that
"end users" can somewhat appreciate: built-in mandatory
data security.  If widespread use is a goal, then that
feature should be touted.

[9fans] Re: Kernighan interview (w/ Plan 9 mention)

[Christopher Browne]

Centuries ago, Nostradamus foresaw a time when Conway Yee would say:
>Leo Caves <caves@ysbl.york.ac.uk> writes:
>> Arguably, Linux transitioned from its hobbyist niche
>> to a wider acceptance through a server role.  The effort now
>> seems to be back to the desktop.
>> 
>> Its difficult to tell in what way Plan 9 might make such a transition.
>
>I would argue that such a transition will likely never take place.
>
>First, there is usually only room for 1 "killer app" in the market and
>Linux has already taken up that role.

_Partially_ true...

The "killer app" that I'd consider Linux provides is a "freely
licensed, freely modifiable environment in which to run All Sorts Of
Unix Code."

That's not "so killer" as to have prevented there from being quite
viable teams working on FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD, that provide
much the same "killer app."

The problem for Plan 9 is that it _isn't_ quite such a platform.  It's
_not_ "more-or-less a Unix clone."

While there are common roots with Unix, the way Plan 9 proves really
useful is if it is used to do things you couldn't do with Unix.

There is a close parallel here with Hurd; the major _merit_ of Hurd,
over Linux, is the ability to do Cool Stuff using the Hurd translators
that provide cool mappings of system facilities onto filesystems.  

The problem with this is that if you write applications that depend on
"Cool Stuff" like Hurd translators or Plan 9 namespaces, those
applications can't run anywhere else.  Which makes them "niche" apps,
which will be largely ignored by the large proportion of the
population that use more "mainstream" systems.

You may have a cool HTTP server where all the behaviour/configuration
is exposed as a virtual filesystem; if it only runs on Plan 9,
interest will be limited to the point of extinction.

>Second, who can forget the litigation over NET/2?  Anyone who
>contributes with the intent of transitioning to a server role will
>eventually have to deal with ATT's lawyers.  I believe that the
>engineers/scientists at ATT are honorable but are their lawyers?
>
>Third, as it stands, Plan 9's license is hardly appropriate to those
>who would run it for serious applications.  Who wants to take the risk
>of having ATT own your application?

This just makes things worse; even if the lawyers _are_ honorable,
nobody knows for sure until _after_ they deploy the applications, and
the uncertainty will be crippling.
-- 
(concatenate 'string "aa454" "@" "freenet.carleton.ca")
<http://www.hex.net/~cbbrowne/>
Rules of the Evil Overlord #83. "If I'm eating dinner with the hero,
put poison in his goblet, then have to leave the table for any reason,
I will order new drinks for both of us instead of trying to decide
whether or not to switch with him." <http://www.eviloverlord.com/>

[9fans] Re: Kernighan interview (w/ Plan 9 mention)

[George Michaelson]

I took the roadsigns about this stuff seriously. When they seemed to say

	"don't play here if you are thick, or lazy, or both"

I made a simple call, and decided I fitted both categories. While its not
nice to have to self-assess as 'provably unsuitable for plan9' I think I
made the right decision. Whats more, I believe "you" all breathed a sigh
of relief inside when I did.

Face facts: you don't want larry, curly and moe anywhere but on VCR. Would
you ask them in for coffee? I hate people like me. I strive to avoid them!

In my own defence, I have tried quite hard to make smart,active people
in my employer (I work in a 'research' company whatever that means in
computer science these days) look at 9 or Brazil or Inferno and the
stunning indifference got too wearing. I don't know why C# or Java or
Corba heads get such strong NIH when you talk about the alternative,
but I just couldn't make it fly. Interestingly there were people down in
OZ who were in the space, and who seemed to be willing to have overtures
made, and even do some legwork from their side (hi Bob) but you can only
ask people so many times without a win. Perhaps my asking was a poisoned
chalice. I hope not. [I did try to do a better job than this text suggests]

Instead of worrying about this, I suggest people keep the faith, and
make it work better for themselves. You might like to think about what
it would mean to make Plan9 work as a root level nameserver running
not-bind DNS code, or as a sealed-box NetAPP offering NFS or NTFS as
commodity service. Do you really want whiners like me trailling along
with silly questions? Would you want the 24*7 headaches of reassuring
brain-dead users? I know some of you have been there (Hi Charles) and I
cannot imagine you want to go back. Boyd Roberts on the helpdesk. Wow.
(mind you, anybody who will find bugs for whiskey gets my vote)

[L]users want bevelled edge windows. They want reassurance. Plan9 is 
interestingly scary. It's not reassuring. Being made to feel dumb doesn't
inspire one to confidence.  Look at sendmail-vs-mmdf. history is not on
your side. cat -v. less. vim-emulator-for-emacs. the existance of
skins, netscape/mozilla, and themes.org -The list is endless. God, why
do they want a button called [Start] in the left hand corner? But if by
accident they drag that bar to the top, all hell breaks loose!

PS. please bring back Mark V Shaney. I miss him loads. Where is inspired
lunacy when you need it?

cheers 
	-George

[9fans] Re: Kernighan interview (w/ Plan 9 mention)

[Michael Jeffrey.]

Conway Yee <yee@bronze.lcs.mit.edu> writes:

>Third, as it stands, Plan 9's license is hardly appropriate to those
>who would run it for serious applications.  Who wants to take the risk
>of having ATT own your application?

The grant back clause in the Plan 9 Open Source licence 4.0 does not
relate to your applications.  It is designed, on my reading, to
give rights to Lucent (Original Contributor) and other Contributors
(the rest of us) to get access to modifications made on the original source.
On my reading, neither Lucent nor anyone else has any lien over an
application that you develop under Plan 9.

Re: [9fans] Re: Kernighan interview (w/ Plan 9 mention)

[Boyd Roberts]

From: Douglas A. Gwyn <gwyn@arl.army.mil>
> (This reminds me of the Blit
> marketing that could have competed with X11 but didn't.)
> 

reminds me of PARC.

Re: [9fans] Re: Kernighan interview (w/ Plan 9 mention)

[Boyd Roberts]

From: George Michaelson <ggm@azure.dstc.edu.au>
To: <9fans@cse.psu.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, September 06, 2000 10:45 AM
Subject: [9fans] Re: Kernighan interview (w/ Plan 9 mention)


> Boyd Roberts on the helpdesk. Wow.  (mind you, anybody who
> will find bugs for whiskey gets my vote)

help desk, no way.  bug fixes, yes as long as the bug report
is sufficently detailed.  i have some vague recollection i
made an offer to fix bugs for JD.  don't know whether i ever
collected.  probably when i was at PRL -- ULTRIX engineering
were hopeless;  we stole the code and fixed it ourselves.
of course, we could never release it.  catch 22.

Re: [9fans] Re: Kernighan interview (w/ Plan 9 mention)

[Boyd Roberts]

From: Conway Yee <yee@bronze.lcs.mit.edu>
> 
> First, there is usually only room for 1 "killer app" in the market and
> Linux has already taken up that role.
> 

only thing linux has taken up is cpu, ram and disk.  it has not advanced
the state of the art by one iota.  dennis has a great line about the
state of the art and unix/linux.

open source is a lot older than linux.  readnews? [awful, but free]

Re: [9fans] Re: Kernighan interview (w/ Plan 9 mention)

[Boyd Roberts]

From: Boyd Roberts <boyd@planete.net>
> From: Douglas A. Gwyn <gwyn@arl.army.mil>
> > (This reminds me of the Blit
> > marketing that could have competed with X11 but didn't.)
> > 
> 
> reminds me of PARC.

i thought i should qualify that last statement.  [Xerox] PARC
invented the Alto [bitmapped display], ethernet and the laser
printer.  this was ~1975.  the alto had a mouse, but the mouse
was not invented at PARC.

my reference (rather than 'doing a boyd' or by force of argument):

    Fumbling the Future
    Douglas K. Smith and Robert C. Alexandre
    ISBN: 0-688-06959-2

they even had a design on the board for a laser printer that
_could not be built_ because it was far in advance of the,
then, current technology.

steve jobs took a tour of PARC which turned into that abortion
known as the 'Mac'.

those who forget their history are doomed to repeat it...

Re: [9fans] Kernighan interview (w/ Plan 9 mention)

[bwc]

> Its difficult to disagree with these remarks.   However, key
> is the nature of the niche(s) that Plan 9 will occupy (aside
> from system's research - its ideas 
> are already propagating into other systems).
> Currently, its "popularity" belies its influence (and at this
> stage that is probably a good thing).

I have used Plan 9 for embedded development for five years, and
used sam/mk/9term/9wm longer than that.  I think the diverse
nature of small network boxes doing specialized tasks will account
for most of the computing in the future, and I think the plan 9
make a great base for these devices.

  Brantley