It would be very hard to replicate what Go can do for Plan 9 with something else. There is a large and growing collection of packages that make it possible to deal with the dizzying number of protocols and APIs that are today's WWW. Another advantage of Go is that, like Limbo, it enables the young enthusiastic 9fans to contribute meaningful work in a shorter time that would otherwise be required (e.g. mastering C, etc.). I think, in the long run, the pain of the teething problems are worth the effort.

This current situation is not insurmountable; it seems that we have enough people who are interested and a handful who are contributors that we can make this happen with some coordination.

On Mon, Dec 2, 2013 at 6:33 AM, erik quanstrom <quanstro@quanstro.net> wrote:

> The Go tree is still in a code freeze but I'll have those
> CLs submitted as soon as it reopens.
>
> Also, we have three months (until the Go 1.3 code freeze) to
> get the Plan 9 port passing all tests on the build dashboard
> or it will have to move outside the main repository:

there is no demotivation in open source as powerful as a threat.

is the threat standing? that is, if the plan 9 port is broken again
when 1.5 rolls around in just a few more months, does the plan 9
port get booted then, too?

personally, i think a preemtive strike is in order. a lot of time
has been spent chasing basic broken-with-merge issues, the
rather superfluous libbio macros, the self-inflicted memmove
problem, &c. those are just recent issues. given the rate of go
development, i would think this is likely to continue.

- erik