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From: "Devon H. O'Dell" <devon.odell@gmail.com>
To: 9fans <9fans@9fans.net>
Subject: Re: [9fans] Foundation new releases question
Date: Thu, 1 Apr 2021 22:25:26 -0700	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <CAFgOgC_gH=gXuOUssXUd9qGmjfoM5MZ2xtj11CHv3ucukjwU_A@mail.gmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <CAJQ9t7jA5HC+vqQ+SJW45kE+EY1L9uiGZpf_OLnXHDmp4-OHSg@mail.gmail.com>

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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  reply	other threads:[~2021-04-02  5:25 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 16+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2021-04-01 16:31 leimy2k via 9fans
2021-04-01 17:03 ` sirjofri
2021-04-02  4:20   ` Lucio De Re
2021-04-02  5:25     ` Devon H. O'Dell [this message]
2021-04-02  8:34       ` vic.thacker
2021-04-02 15:06       ` Devon H. O'Dell
2021-04-02 16:53         ` hiro
2021-04-03 15:27     ` Ethan Gardener
2021-04-03 15:37       ` hiro
2021-04-03 15:39         ` hiro
2021-04-03 15:47           ` Keith Gibbs
2021-04-03 18:17             ` hiro
2021-04-05 11:43             ` Ethan Gardener
2021-04-06  2:05               ` Anthony Martin
2021-04-08 14:39               ` cinap_lenrek
2021-04-09 12:57                 ` Ethan Gardener

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