From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 MIME-Version: 1.0 In-Reply-To: References: From: Lucio De Re Date: Sun, 2 Sep 2018 20:16:39 +0200 Message-ID: To: Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs <9fans@9fans.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" Subject: Re: [9fans] Is Plan 9 C "Less Dangerous?" Topicbox-Message-UUID: e05faba0-ead9-11e9-9d60-3106f5b1d025 On 9/2/18, Chris McGee 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.