Re: [9fans] Plan9 - the next 20 years

["J.R. Mauro" <jrm8005@gmail.com>]

On Fri, Apr 17, 2009 at 3:16 PM, Steve Simon <steve@quintile.net> wrote:
> I cannot find the reference (sorry), but I read an interview with Ken
> (Thompson) a while ago.
>
> He was asked what he would change if he where working on plan9 now,
> and his reply was somthing like "I would add support for cloud computing".
>
> I admin I am not clear exactly what he meant by this.
>
> -Steve
>

He said that even with as smooth as Plan 9 makes things seem, you can
still tell that there's more than one computer involved, and that
sometimes that is a bit bad. IIRC he didn't mention anything in
particular.

I imagine process migration via /proc would make things pretty nice,
as well as a better way to move namespaces around than cpu does. In
general, the ability to really blur the line when you want to could be
better. Letting the computer blur the line when you want it to is also
something that I think would help. Plan 9 leaves it to the user to
pick where something should run, and then only on that machine. I'd
like to let the OS decide where to run certain things (and if that
computer isn't available, to pick another), and maybe when I go
someplace else, I'd like to bring that process back over to the
computer I'm at instead of talking to it over a (potentially slow)
network connection.

On a slightly related note, I talked with Vint Cerf recently, and his
major concern is a standardized way to have different clouds
communicate their capabilities and the services they're willing to
provide. I mentioned Plan 9's concepts, and we basically came to the
conclusion that we need Plan 9's ideas brought into every major OS, as
well as protocols to facilitate the non-homogeneous systems with a way
of communicating and cooperating.

Creating the tools is fairly straightforward. The tough nut to crack
is adoption (as we all know)