Re: [9fans] Question about Plan9 project

[Uriel <uriel99@gmail.com>]

On Sat, Jul 18, 2009 at 6:25 PM, Anthony Sorace<anothy@gmail.com> wrote:
> Plan 9 is an open source project

The Plan 9 code base (at least the released parts of it) is open source.

Plan 9 is *not* an open source project, it can hardly be called a
project even: There is no release management, there is no development
process, there is no way to know what anyone is working on, no way to
have any idea of what changes and features to expect in the future or
when, or when any given bug might be fixed, or even a bug database for
that matter, nor a way to know what changes have been made or why
(other than computing your own diffs based on past snapshots).

So you are on your own, you can take the code (while the site happens
to be up, or from a mirror), do whatever you like with it, but that is
all there is and all anyone can count on.

uriel

>; 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
>
>