From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Date: Thu, 9 Apr 2009 23:34:03 +0100 From: Eris Discordia To: Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs <9fans@9fans.net> Message-ID: <3F6B6589F529BEAECE105A71@[192.168.1.2]> In-Reply-To: References: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Subject: Re: [9fans] a bit OT, programming style question Topicbox-Message-UUID: d9177134-ead4-11e9-9d60-3106f5b1d025 > this is the "space-shuttle dichotomy." it's a false one. it's a > continuum. its ends are dangerous. So somewhere in the middle is the golden mean? I have no objections to that. *BSD systems very well represent a silver, if not a golden, mean--just my idea, of course. > it is interesting to me that some software manages to run off both > ends of this continuum at the same time. in linux your termcap > from 1981 will still work, but software written to access /sys last > year is likely out-of-date. While I won't vouch for Linux as a good OS (user-land and kernel combined) I understand what you see as its eccentricity is merely a side-effect of openness. Tighten the development up and you get a BSD-style system (committer/contributor/maintainer/grunt/user highest-to-lowest ranking, with a demiurge position for Theo de Raadt). Tighten it even further up with in-ken shared among a core group of old-timers and thoroughbreds transmitted only to serious researchers and you get Plan 9. You are right, after all. It all lies on a continuum. Actually, more tightly regulated Linux distros such as Slackware readily demonstrate that; they easily beat all-out all-open distros like Fedora (whose existence is probably perceived at Red Hat as a big brainstorming project). > your insinuation that *bsd is a real serious system and plan 9 is > a research system doesn't make any historical sense to me. they > both started as research systems. i am not aware of any law that > prevents a system that started as a research project from becoming > a serious production system. What I am insinuating is more like this: any serious system will sooner or later have to grow warts and/or contract herpes. That's an unavoidable consequence of social life. If you do insist that Plan 9 has no warts, or far less warts than the average, or that it has never seen a cold sore on its upper lip then I'll happily conclude it has never lived socially. And I haven't really ever used Plan 9 or "been into it." The no-herpes indicator is that strong. > i know of many thousands of plan 9 systems in production right > now. Good for you. Honestly. --On Thursday, April 09, 2009 11:06 AM -0400 erik quanstrom wrote: > On Thu Apr 9 10:48:08 EDT 2009, eris.discordia@gmail.com wrote: >> Most of it in the 19 lines for one TERMCAP variable. Strictly a relic of >> the past kept with all good intentions: backward compatibility, and >> heeding > > [...] > >> Quite a considerable portion of UNIX-like systems, FreeBSD in this case, >> is the way it is not because the developers are stupid, rather because >> they have a "constituency" to tend to. They aren't carefree researchers >> with high ambitions. > > this is the "space-shuttle dichotomy." it's a false one. it's a > continuum. its ends are dangerous. > > on the one hand, if you change things, the new things are likely > to be buggy. on the space shuttle, this is bad. people die. > > on the other hand, systems are not perfect. and if the problems > are not addressed, eventually the system will need to much fixing > and will be abandoned. > > yet bringing a new system on line is an even bigger risk. everything > is new simultaneously. > > it is interesting to me that some software manages to run off both > ends of this continuum at the same time. in linux your termcap > from 1981 will still work, but software written to access /sys last > year is likely out-of-date. > > your insinuation that *bsd is a real serious system and plan 9 is > a research system doesn't make any historical sense to me. they > both started as research systems. i am not aware of any law that > prevents a system that started as a research project from becoming > a serious production system. > > i know of many thousands of plan 9 systems in production right > now. > > - erik >