From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu
From: "Thomas Bushnell, BSG" <tb+usenet@becket.net>
Message-ID: <87adxxy910.fsf@becket.becket.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Subject: [9fans] one reason ideas from Plan 9 didn't catch on
Date: Thu,  8 Nov 2001 10:40:26 +0000
Topicbox-Message-UUID: 1932c2a6-eaca-11e9-9e20-41e7f4b1d025


One reason that ideas from Plan 9 didn't catch on is that Rob Pike
et. al. filed for patents on some of the ideas in Plan 9.  When he
came to MIT's AI Lab, and gave a nice presentation on Plan 9, I asked
him which of the ideas he had talked about we were allowed to use in
our own software projects.  He said "as far as I'm concerned, all of
them".  I asked if there were any patents that might matter as far as
AT&T was concerned, and he said there were some, but that he didn't
even understand the patent applications.

I know that his talk made an impression: the innovation of the ideas,
the impressiveness of the system built on them, and that not only
didn't we know if we would be sued for using similar ideas in our own
systems, but Rob wasn't going to tell us if that was possible or not.

And then, years later, after Plan 9 failed to capture a big audience,
it gets released for more public consumption, but for some
incomprehensible reason, is still not free software.

There are some pretty big reasons that Plan 9's very good ideas are
sitting in an eddy of the stream of OS design: because the political
shenanigans of those who hold the keys have done their best to keep
those ideas out of the mainstream.

Thomas