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

["Douglas A. Gwyn" <gwyn@arl.army.mil>]

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.