Re: [9fans] Foundation new releases question

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

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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