Re: [9fans] Foundation new releases question

["Devon H. O'Dell" <devon.odell@gmail.com>]

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This was unnecessarily complain-y and overly political. "It would be nice
for p9f.org to also link 9front" is all I really meant here. I'm sorry for
this message, and appreciate that p9f is both nascent and nobody's actual
job.

Kind regards,

--dho

On Thu, Apr 1, 2021 at 22:25 Devon H. O'Dell <devon.odell@gmail.com> wrote:

> I've been pretty silent on the list for years, and I hope that as a
> former collaborator on foundation efforts and former Plan 9 GSoC
> co-admin and mentor, and assurance that my silence hasn't been
> ignorance, that my opinion still has weight with folks in p9f.
>
> I have to admit a bit of surprise that the foundation will accept GSoC
> projects for 9front without linking 9front on its page. Additionally,
> the about page doesn't describe any of the 9front efforts. While I
> have not been a fan of some interactions between 9fans and 9front over
> the years, these politics seem largely antiquated, and my impression
> is that the 9front community "political jokes" are (at least in the
> past 5 years) much less acerbic, if present at all. The system itself
> is the most active in the community, with bugfixes, new hardware
> support, and new (purist-compatible) features not present in any other
> "fork".
>
> I'm not a fan of what's starting to look like some weird form of
> historical revisionism. Functionality-wise, 9front is tip-of-tree.
> Realistically, 9front is tip-of-tree. This is the third or fourth
> thread asking why 9front has no mention on p9f.org. Why does 9front
> have no mention on p9f.org?
>
> Unlike Lucio, I have no desire to encourage nor coordinate
> consolidation of forks. I don't think that's necessary. The ecosystem
> is fractured, and has been for nearly 2 decades. I don't think that's
> a problem. We can admit that we're a fractured ecosystem, and embrace
> that. P9f seems to do that by accepting funds for GSoC contributions
> to 9front, without any acknowledgement of 9front's presence outside of
> soliciting project ideas. Without assigning malice or blame, this is
> not correct. It should be easy to see how this is politically
> problematic.
>
> Kind regards,
>
> --dho
>
> On Thu, Apr 1, 2021 at 9:21 PM Lucio De Re <lucio.dere@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > I need time to assimilate mindset changing concepts, I should not
> > respond as quickly as I am doing here, so please understand that
> > nothing below is intended to offend anyone, it is more a totally
> > subjective and poorly formulated knee-jerk reaction to what is clearly
> > a critical event in Plan 9's existence.
> >
> > On 4/1/21, sirjofri <sirjofri+ml-9fans@sirjofri.de> wrote:
> > > I know only 4 currently active Plan 9 systems. (1) The official 4e
> > > release, which is ... well it works, I guess. (2) 9legacy, which is 4e
> > > plus patches (fixes and modern stuff). (3) the RPi forks. (4) 9front,
> > > which might be the biggest and the farthest away from 4e, but maybe
> also
> > > the system which supports most hardware, maybe.
> > >
> > I had a brief exchange with Cinap quite a long time ago and whereas I
> > make no claim to follow the Bell Labs philosophy particularly closely,
> > I figured that the divergence between BL and 9front had sort of
> > solidified with the introduction of Go. Or perhaps those were just
> > symptoms and the core philosophies had a nature of their own. Cinap
> > may well recall this exchange.
> >
> > The bottom line as I see it, is that whereas 9legacy and what I call
> > 9miller attempt to follow a conservative path, 9front has taken a path
> > of its own and only fragments of Cinap's efforts (without for a moment
> > disparaging all other 9front contributors) can be assimilated into
> > Plan 9 without some shift in philosophy.
> >
> > I think that the "purity" (imaginary as it may be, it is an historical
> > fact) of BL Plan 9 and the practicality of 9front should be discussed
> > at a philosophical level and the two forks be reconciled as far as
> > possible. But a compromise position needs to take into account the
> > viability of Plan 9 as something different from being merely a
> > research OS (which I think has been more or less exhausted).
> >
> > Agreeing on a new role (perhaps precisely as a target for
> > contributions by a community with a different mindset) for a shared
> > product will help attaining such an objective. That two different
> > paths may need to be followed to arrive there seems inevitable, but
> > officially cooperating along those two paths would save a lot of
> > redundancy and reduce the risk of further divergence.
> >
> > We need to talk, seriously, about where we're going. The risk that the
> > Plan 9 Foundation may successfully dominate the Plan 9 landscape and
> > totally alienate the 9front contributors quite frankly horrifies me.
> >
> > There, it's been said. This seems to be the place, at least for now,
> > where my fears will be allayed or solidified.
> >
> > Lucio.
> >
> > ------------------------------------------
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