Re: [9fans] Is Plan 9 C "Less Dangerous?"

[Lucio De Re <lucio.dere@gmail.com>]

On 9/2/18, Chris McGee <newton688@gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm reading this article about how they are going through the giant heaping
> pile of Linux kernel code and trying to come up with safer practices to
> avoid the "dangers" of C. The prevailing wisdom appears to be that things
> should eventually be rewritten in Rust some day.
>
Like hell they will! By the time they have even a minute portion of
Linux running under a different language, the language-du-jour will
have moved on. It's a monolith, it cannot be translated, unless it is
mechanically. And we know how brilliant that is likely to be.

> How does everyone feel about the Plan 9/9front kernel? Have they gone
> through hardening/testing exercises over the years? I'm curious what tools
> are available to help discover bugs.
>
Simplicity is Plan 9's most relevant trait here, but that's where you
draw the line. If anyone feels like finding possible security holes in
the Plan 9 or the 9front kernels, they have to have very strong
motivation to do it. In general that motivation is spelled M-O-N-E-Y
and no one is likely to find the 9 flavours worthy of a big lump of
that resource.

My opinions, of course.

Lucio.