9fans - fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs
 help / color / mirror / Atom feed
From: Lucio De Re <lucio.dere@gmail.com>
To: 9fans <9fans@9fans.net>
Subject: Re: [9fans] Software philosophy
Date: Thu, 19 Aug 2021 11:27:30 +0200	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <CAJQ9t7jQ_XOfis_Ney41HiqWNd-TO-OLq-k7cYsTC_YHNH8+6w@mail.gmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <3cdfcd26-b11d-4140-a9fb-cae0304e6ca2@sirjofri.de>

On 8/19/21, sirjofri <sirjofri+ml-9fans@sirjofri.de> wrote:
> Hello dear community,
>
> I've read through many things in this thread and just want to add some
> two cents in a list format:
>
> 1) p9f (to my knowledge) never said anything about The One Plan 9. This
> was afaik the idea of some other community member, and I never heard any
> statement by p9f about that.
>
Indeed correct. My suggestion started with a lobbying idea for useful
concepts such as the addition of Oauth2 to factotum so that there
could be some momentum rather than spurious hope for interest to
incorporate "core" changes into whatever P9F consider their target OS.

I am not a member of P9F, when I checked the membership I assumed that
my participation as more than a spectator would not be welcome -
personal reasons.

So instead i thought that as a lobbyist within a framework, I could
expect to have a less subjectively negative value, period.

> 2) In fact, p9f is pretty silent, not only these days. This could be a
> good sign, as they let community be what they are, only occasionally
> taking part in it.
>
P9F owes no one anything. Some resources seem to have moved under
their umbrella, contributed voluntarily. The licence change has been
an important step forward. Again, approaching P9F in a public forum
may or may not have a more positive impact. Like it or not, the
foundation is operated by humans and historically active Plan 9 "fans"
have behaved controversially. Not all, but a lot.

> 3) the p9f website promotes links to the Plan 9 archive software (V1-V4),
> 9legacy as "Plan 9 with many useful patches", the RPi version and other
> Plan 9 resources. 9front is _never_ mentioned at all. It seems like they
> don't consider 9front as a Plan 9 system at all.
>
That is true and only P9F can address that issue. Which does rather
throw a spanner in Keith's complaints about me, because his claim is
that P9F want to assimilate and dominate 9front, based on a very thin
claim from me that I would be happier in a 1P9 universe. But let's not
ad hominem unnecessarily.

Incidentally, all contributions to 9legacy and/or mentioned as P9F
resources are either inherited from Nokia (have I got that right?) or
from individual members of P9F. As an afterthought, is it not obvious
that 9front may be able to get a seat at the table if they contributed
in a similar way? Is that possible? Has such an approach already been
turned down? What do we know?

> I don't know why, it's possible they just don't want it to exist or they
> don't know how to see it. It just hurts me personally as a community
> person who uses 9front and not the original Plan 9. And it's confusing.
> Am I even a Plan 9 user? The core OS principles are the same and most
> "shell" concepts also.
>
Totally. No one labels you a Plan 9 user, you do that yourself. There
are subtle semantic issues with the original "9front" nomenclature and
remote history. We've all grown up a lot since then, but part of
growing up includes owning errors of judgement. We can, presumably,
find our way forward without that baggage, maybe not. Opinions seem to
vary (my own personal conflicts included) in this forum.

> 4) The split between original Plan9/9legacy and the 9front fork is
> reflected in a split between communities. David and the 9front core devs
> already showed that they are generally willing to share and accept
> patches and I never noticed any bad tone in their discussion, however the
> community is split up. And I don't think that we are so big that we _had_
> to split up, there are other reasons, maybe historical reasons I don't
> know as a "fresh" community member with only ~5 years.
>
As I mentioned elsewhere, there is what seems to me a well defined
"9front inside circle", which basically seems to include, by default
or by choice, everyone that uses 9front as their primary (Plan 9)
platform. Vocal defenders of 9front all appear to carry virtual
membership cards to this circle. And in case I am once again
misunderstood, I think that is a very important and positive aspect of
the 9front community.

As a pale-skinned South African (European descent), I am also deemed
to carry a membership card to some kind of circle, so I'm not
incompetent to address this aspect.

What seems to be harped upon by the vocal defenders of 9front,
however, is this fictional idea that there is another community, let's
call them "9legacy", that is attempting to subvert 9front's efforts to
gain some kind of recognition in the bigger picture. I know no one
whose preference, like mine, is to stick closer to the 9legacy release
of Plan 9, who in some way wants to reduce the value of 9front. Just
as OP points out, cooperation between David and Cinap and colleagues
has been cordial, if occasionally confrontational, for many, many
years. So Hiro and Kurt and others can be scratchy and no doubt so can
I, I don't think any of us have done any permanent damage to the 9fans
or the narrower 9front community.

Hmm, there has been some damage, quite a way back, now that I think
about it, but that goes back a long, long way, when discord was more
fierce and emotional and 9front hadn't yet found its own identity.

So what I'm saying is that 9fans exists, it IS a community; 9front
(the OS) has its own community that overlaps in part with 9fans;
9legacy (the code) has users, individuals, mostly, who may ignore
9front, but cannot possibly be accused in any real sense of
participating in a counter-9front conspiracy. If there is any evidence
to the contrary, I'd like to see it.

I'll refrain from elaborating on motives and other unprovable details.

> 5) I really wished p9f would tell us more about their plans. It really
> seems like it's what we (9gridchan chat) feared in the beginning: a
> secret society. p9f is very silent, currently only seems to manage GSoC
> and nothing more. They told us they needed time to organize GSoC and
> themselves, but that was in january/february!
>
I think P9F has performed the most important duties they set
themselves: they are providing a useful umbrella to protect Plan
9-related resources from becoming extinct and have modernised the Plan
9 software licence to protect Plan 9 from being hi-jacked by hostile
groups. Do you think anything else is required of them?

As for the issue of Plan 9's "name", I agree with Keith that 9front
may take exception at being left out of the Plan 9 nomenclature and I
think it is up to the 9front community to approach P9F to negotiate
what should be the final outcome. I have no idea what it means for
9front to be or not to be a "Plan 9" and, off-hand, I bet no one else
in this forum has considered this a relevant issue. But maybe it
should be and whereas "Plan 9" is some kind of intellectual property
owned by P9F, 9front may be welcome to use it.

In fact, there is some thin ice there, so 9front may well want to
investigate this and approach P9F for clarification, before P9F makes
a decision that may not go down well with everyone.

> It's fine if they want to be silent, but it would be nice to see what we
> can expect from them. Currently it seems like they just want to share
> links to 9legacy and the archive and organize GSoC and hide the fact that
> 9front exists.
>
How do you "hide a fact"? Are you also infected with that conspiracy
theory? And what would P9F possibly gain from such an absurd stance?
9front appears 11 times (5 or so distinct entries) in the Plan 9
wikipedia page. I guess the "authors" may be able to remove these
references, but would it not be better if the 9front community chose
to create a wikipedia entry for themselves? That said, if there was a
conspiracy, would the conspirators not have already wiped out 9front
from a wikipedia page over which they presumably have some level of
authority?

> 6) p9f had a page about their purpose. It was like, they want to promote
> all Plan 9 systems and related technologies: 9atom, 9legacy, ... missing
> the (apparently) most obvious one: 9front. I couldn't find the page
> anymore. Other dubious sources can be found on the 9front /who/ site
> about p9f, where they apparently stole resources from 9front/cat-v pages.
> Very suspicious somehow.
>
Skip is a P9F member. Perhaps he'd care to comment? If accusations of
intellectual property "theft" have any validity (or none), this may
well be a great place to air them.

> 7) To clarify: I don't want to see p9f as bad. I want to see them as a
> nice organization which is open for community efforts that need some
> official site. I want to see other community members/devs there, maybe
> one 9front contributor. I want to see them mentioning 9front like they
> mention other Plan 9 projects. I want to see p9f members open their
> mouths sometimes (which does happen) and take part in the community.
>
You get to see in the P9F what you contributed to, no more, nor less
than anyone else. I won't bore anyone with a rant.

> These are my wishes and notes, everything from my perspective.
>
> sirjofri
>
Thank you for raising them. As I said up front, I am not a P9F member
of any kind. But I know that its intentions are far less nefarious
than of those who wittingly ascribe nefarious intentions to them.
Again, 9front has an "inside", get it to address with P9F their and
your reservations. If they don't respond, then you and other 9fronters
can bring evidence of ill intentions to this forum.

Lucio.

------------------------------------------
9fans: 9fans
Permalink: https://9fans.topicbox.com/groups/9fans/T9ef6430f3025e731-Mc60bc784bcca5bb5b657185a
Delivery options: https://9fans.topicbox.com/groups/9fans/subscription

  reply	other threads:[~2021-08-19  9:27 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 62+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2021-08-16 11:15 [9fans] OAuth2 in factotum Demetrius Iatrakis
2021-08-17  3:48 ` Lucio De Re
2021-08-17  7:47   ` Keith Gibbs
2021-08-18  3:55     ` Lucio De Re
2021-08-18  7:02       ` [9fans] Software philosophy Skip Tavakkolian
2021-08-18  7:19         ` hiro
2021-08-18 10:15           ` Lucio De Re
2021-08-18  9:46         ` Keith Gibbs
2021-08-18 10:13         ` vic.thacker
2021-08-18 11:34           ` Keith Gibbs
2021-08-18 11:47             ` Lucio De Re
2021-08-18 23:44             ` hiro
2021-08-19  4:34               ` Lucio De Re
2021-08-19 10:44                 ` Keith Gibbs
2021-08-19 18:53                 ` Git & Conventional Browsers (Was Re: [9fans] Software philosophy) unobe
2021-08-19 19:00                   ` ori
2021-08-18 11:34           ` [9fans] Software philosophy Lucio De Re
2021-08-18 11:28         ` Lucio De Re
2021-08-18 12:02           ` Keith Gibbs
2021-08-18 19:33             ` leimy2k via 9fans
2021-08-18 20:09               ` David du Colombier
2021-08-18 22:00                 ` Eli Cohen
2021-08-19  7:08                   ` Keith Gibbs
2021-08-19  7:59                     ` sirjofri
2021-08-19  9:27                       ` Lucio De Re [this message]
2021-08-19  9:45                         ` hiro
2021-08-19  9:51                         ` hiro
2021-08-19 10:10                           ` sirjofri
2021-08-19 10:38                         ` Keith Gibbs
2021-08-19 11:45                           ` hiro
2021-08-19 12:43                             ` Eli Cohen
2021-08-19 19:58                               ` Aram Hăvărneanu
2021-08-19 10:56                         ` kvik
2021-08-19 11:33                           ` sirjofri
2021-08-19 20:44                           ` ori
2021-08-19  9:29                       ` hiro
2021-08-19  9:44                         ` sirjofri
2021-08-19  9:19                     ` hiro
2021-08-22  2:46                   ` kokamoto
2021-08-22  3:16                     ` Eli Cohen
2021-08-22  7:07                       ` [9fans] Drawterm GPU (was: Software philosophy) sirjofri
2021-08-22 10:04                         ` Frank D. Engel, Jr.
2021-08-22 11:49                           ` sirjofri
2021-08-22 12:24                             ` Chris McGee
2021-08-18  9:18       ` [9fans] OAuth2 in factotum Keith Gibbs
2021-08-18 12:10         ` Ethan Gardener
2021-08-18 15:23         ` Stuart Morrow
2021-08-18 16:58           ` Stuart Morrow
2021-08-18 17:06             ` Sigrid Solveig Haflínudóttir
2021-08-17 15:25   ` ori
2021-08-18  3:59     ` Lucio De Re
2021-08-18  4:20       ` ori
2021-08-18  4:42         ` Eli Cohen
2021-08-18  5:06         ` Lucio De Re
2021-08-17  4:13 ` ori
2021-08-17  5:43   ` Lucio De Re
2021-08-19  3:52 ` Kurt H Maier
2021-08-19  5:38 ` ori
2021-08-22 20:16 ` ori
2021-08-22 20:32   ` Demetrius Iatrakis
2021-08-22 20:38     ` ori
2021-08-22 20:36   ` ori

Reply instructions:

You may reply publicly to this message via plain-text email
using any one of the following methods:

* Save the following mbox file, import it into your mail client,
  and reply-to-all from there: mbox

  Avoid top-posting and favor interleaved quoting:
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style#Interleaved_style

* Reply using the --to, --cc, and --in-reply-to
  switches of git-send-email(1):

  git send-email \
    --in-reply-to=CAJQ9t7jQ_XOfis_Ney41HiqWNd-TO-OLq-k7cYsTC_YHNH8+6w@mail.gmail.com \
    --to=lucio.dere@gmail.com \
    --cc=9fans@9fans.net \
    /path/to/YOUR_REPLY

  https://kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-send-email.html

* If your mail client supports setting the In-Reply-To header
  via mailto: links, try the mailto: link
Be sure your reply has a Subject: header at the top and a blank line before the message body.
This is a public inbox, see mirroring instructions
for how to clone and mirror all data and code used for this inbox;
as well as URLs for NNTP newsgroup(s).