Re: [9fans] Balancing Progress and Accessibility in the Plan 9 Community. (Was: [9fans] Interoperating between 9legacy and 9front)

[Jacob Moody <moody@posixcafe.org>]

On 5/12/24 20:46, Dan Cross wrote:
> On Sun, May 12, 2024 at 9:33 PM <ori@eigenstate.org> wrote:
>> I don't think this approach has ever worked in
>> the open source world -- it always starts with
>> someone building something useful. The vision
>> and goal is defined by the work being done.
>>
>> After something useful is built, people start
>> to join in and contribute.
>>
>> After enough people join in, it makes sense to
>> have more organization.
> 
> I remain mystified by the desired end state here.  For all intents and
> purposes, as far as the wider world is concerned, 9front is plan 9.
> I'm not sure I'd want that burden, to be honest, but that's just me.
> That aside, realistically, 9front is the only thing in the plan 9
> world that has energy behind it.

This doesn't seem about any "end result" here. I read it as more a direct response
to whatever bureaucratic/project management/deliverables/hard core team Vic is imagining.
This is pointing out that everything around organization falls out from people doing work
and others choosing to work with them, which I agree with.

However your question about the end state is interesting.
As it has been discussed ad nauseam here, there is fairly high discontent at
there being anything even close to acknowledgement about 9front being Plan 9.
So much so that things like the p9f go out of their way to avoid talking about us.
You seem to think as I do that this has had litle practical impact. However it
is what I would call unfortunate. I don't bring this up to rehash this issue,
just to explain part of what I feel the current situation is.

We often find ourselves in these situations because of bogus claims made
at 9front's expense. We're here in this thread because of such claims that
9front and 9legacy were wildly incompatible.

> 
> On the other hand, there's 9legacy, which pulls together some useful
> patches and attempts to carry on in a manner imagined to be closer to
> what Bell Labs did. That's fine; it's low activity, but people are
> busy, have lives to live, all that stuff. Regardless, some people seem
> to be genuinely offended by its existence, and I can't really
> understand why.

I can really only speak for myself but I think some frustration comes
at the direct comparisons between the two. 9front has seen a lot of work.
As qwx mentioned we have 10,555 commits on top of our initial import from 2011
and we continue to receive bug fixes and improvements at regular intervals.
Just talking about raw hours invested I think these projects are in different ballparks.
When people suggest tossing that all out for a minimally patched 4e, I think some people
rightfully feel a bit annoyed. That's a lot of baby that goes out with that bathwater.

> 
> Meanwhile, the people actually doing any work are in communication
> with one another, regardless of what label is applied to the software
> running on their individual computers, which is as it should be.

I think it's worth mentioning that I feel like this has improved since
iwp9 was continued. I've learned so much by interacting more with the
"old guard" and there has been much more discussions and code being
passed around. I encourage more folks to join us in working on things.


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