From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 MIME-Version: 1.0 In-Reply-To: <546c45999f1379d06a0b58e47b8cb0c5@mikro> References: <546c45999f1379d06a0b58e47b8cb0c5@mikro> Date: Sun, 15 Dec 2013 15:17:16 -0600 Message-ID: From: Blake McBride To: Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs <9fans@9fans.net> Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary=20cf302238eb4965b204ed993895 Subject: Re: [9fans] Ideas from Plan-9 Topicbox-Message-UUID: 9c941088-ead8-11e9-9d60-3106f5b1d025 --20cf302238eb4965b204ed993895 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 This whole discussion has devolved into a political left vs. right like debate. Suffice it to say that without a critical mass of users, Bell Labs and/or Alcatel-Lucent will drop it, it will experience insufficient support from the user base at large, and it will suffer bit-rot until it won't boot anywhere anymore. Here is an exercise for fun too. Create your own written language, and write a bunch of books in it. Have fun. Blake On Sun, Dec 15, 2013 at 2:17 PM, erik quanstrom wrote: > > "major piece among many" can be more precisely stated as "many pieces > among > > many in order for the platform to achieve a critical mass of users". > > the metaphor "critical mass" is really tiresome one. it does not apply > to operating systems. if one person finds the os useful, then that's > enough. > > i'm not entirely clear how this metaphor is supposed to be interpreted, but > perhaps the idea is that with lots of users, lots of software gets written > and > clearly more is better. > > or maybe not. plan 9 is a research system. for me that means we use it as > it makes doing new and interesting things, or the same thing in an > interesting > way easy. so having piles of ported software is at best a distraction. > > - erik > > --20cf302238eb4965b204ed993895 Content-Type: text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
This whole discussion has devolved into a political left v= s. right like debate. =A0Suffice it to say that without a crit= ical mass of users, Bell Labs and/or Alcatel-Lucent will drop it, it will e= xperience insufficient support from the user base at large, and it will suffer bit-rot until it won't boot anywhere anymore.

Here is an exercise=A0for fun too. =A0Create your own writte= n language, and write a bunch of books in it. =A0Have fun.

Blake

<= br>
On Sun, Dec 15, 2013 at 2:17 PM, erik qua= nstrom <quanstro@quanstro.net> wrote:
> "major piece amo= ng many" can be more precisely stated as "many pieces among
> many in order for the platform to achieve a critical mass of users&quo= t;.

the metaphor "critical mass" is really tiresome one. =A0it = does not apply
to operating systems. =A0if one person finds the os useful, then that's= enough.

i'm not entirely clear how this metaphor is supposed to be interpreted,= but
perhaps the idea is that with lots of users, lots of software gets written = and
clearly more is better.

or maybe not. =A0plan 9 is a research system. =A0for me that means we use i= t as
it makes doing new and interesting things, or the same thing in an interest= ing
way easy. =A0so having piles of ported software is at best a distraction.
- erik


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