I apologize for that statement.  I made it before I knew of 9Front and
9Atom.  From what I saw, the code hadn't changed in a long time, and
wouldn't boot in any environment I had.  All that is false when you take
into account 9Front and 9Atom.  I now have 9Front running fine, and, in
fact, I am renewing a port of an OO language extension to it.

Blake



On Mon, Dec 16, 2013 at 3:26 PM, Oleksandr Iakovliev
<yshurik@lynxline.com>wrote:

>  On 2013-12-15 18:05 , Blake McBride wrote:
>
> In spite of some really great ideas, I think we'd all agree that Plan-9
> has no real future.
>
>
> I would not agree about that. If you would try to have a look at coming
> future tendencies, you would be notified that there is coming what is now
> named as "internet of things" where a lot of material objects in your
> environment will have very small chips which would like to communicate to
> each other and so on (there are already "scary" news about arrested china
> transport containers of electric-irons and kettles which have some extra
> less 1cm chip/device to listen for open wifi nets and spy on them or do
> whatever they are programmed ;) ).
>
> Another tendency which is not so clear now but it is also coming:
> computers/devices/systems/grids which perform actions being same time what
> is called interface-less (good example is your car which automatically
> identify you by sensors and wireless key/cellphone in your pocket when you
> touch cardoor and then system just unlocks that - lot of computations,
> communications and same time interfaceless).
>
> When you try to add these two tendencies to each other it would look like
> that the next generation OSes should be much close to Plan9/Inferno because
> it should easily cover connectivity and inter-communications of these grids
> of tens/hundred/thousands of chips/soc/devices per 10 cubic meters around
> you  or worldwide (btw you can just read story about "bad bios" and suspect
> of ultrasonic communications). They(OS) should be simple regarding internal
> design. Parallel programming, computing/resource sharing, CSP, etc is
> highly required and should not be complicated as it is now in world of
> Unix/Linux/MS/Apple and should be possible to be programmed by individuals
> or small groups.
> Why not MS/Apple-like solution - because then such "nets" will be closed
> and not really manageable at all.
> Why not Linux - it is already over-sized and overcomplicated and highly
> resistive to design changes, so even an admin with 1meter beard cannot see
> all especialities of these such system/nets and cannot administering such
> grids manually. Also consider the security of these complicated systems as
> effect of simplicity of design of each part.
> Regarding Apps - Plan9/Inferno have "reverse" idea: instead of App to
> support environment where it has to run, it makes the environment to fit
> the App needs - much more productive, stable, manageable.
> It should be something simple, easy to join in swarm. Then interface part
> does not have such huge value - even if it is ms system with browser - this
> part does not play "key" role anymore. Plan9/Inferno or their derivatives
> now have great chance for resurrection aka phoenix, but not as your laptop
> OS with nicely drawn weather/news widgets or animated icons, though even
> this is possible.
>
> just my 2cents for what we may see next
>