From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
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Date: Sat, 18 Jul 2009 12:25:39 -0400
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From: Anthony Sorace <anothy@gmail.com>
To: Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs <9fans@9fans.net>
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Subject: Re: [9fans] Question about Plan9 project
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Plan 9 is an open source project; as such, you get at least
the same baseline "guarantees" about its longevity as every
open source project enjoys: as long as someone's interested,
work can continue.

there are still Bell Labs staff who work on Plan 9, although i
don't believe they're working on it for its own sake (at least
not officially). i don't believe ALU has made any sort of
corporate commitment to the OS, that's true.

the "longevity" of any open source OS is based on the
community surrounding it; this is as true for Plan 9 as it is
for Linux and most of the BSDs (and various other things).
our community is way smaller than those, but my sense is
we're stronger in many ways than we've been for most of
the OS's life (we've got less Bell Labs involvement than we
did for the first half, but a broader range of contributors).
Plan 9 ships in at least one commercial product, which
wasn't true for most of its life (i can only think of those
2e-based video systems from earlier; anyone else?), and is
used in some really large research projects by people
outside the Labs.

i, at least, would be interested to know more about what
the specific concerns are. that is, is it about availability,
future evolution, commercial support, or something else?
anthony