Thank you for the clarification, I was puzzling over similar issues.

You could also consider 9vx <http://swtch.com/9vx/> especially if you are
tempted to try running under Qemu or some other virtualised environment.
Although I'm only at the exploratory stage, I find 9vx more useful than
9front.

I also use the Raspberry Pi image
<http://plan9.bell-labs.com/sources/contrib/miller/9pi.img.gz> which is
surprisingly easy to install and use.  I found it easier to get going than
Bell Labs release on various old i386 systems.



On 19 December 2014 at 02:46, David du Colombier <0intro@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > 1) How often does Bell Lab's version change? How often/well
> > do patches from 9legacy enter BL's version? Some numbers?
>
> There used to be changes on sources almost every day,
> up to March 2014. Now the latest change is from September 17.
>
> Most of the 9legacy changes where included into Plan 9.
> Unfortunately, Plan 9 is now in a pretty frozen state.
>
> > 2) How do 9atom and 9legacy notice that there has been
> > a change in BL? (I'd guess that 9legacy could notice
> > immediately, but ...) How is it with 9atom?
>
> I'll speak for 9legacy. Most of the patches are automatically
> applied on the latest Plan 9 CD image on a regular basis.
>
> When a patch doesn't apply anymore, I fix it.
> When a patch has already been applied, I remove it.
>
> > 3) How is updating supposed to work in case of 9atom
> > and 9legacy (as compared to BL's replica) I.e., when
> > I decide to use either 9atom or 9legacy and at some
> > point there is some change in them, will I / can I
> > easily notice and follow?
>
> 9legacy is really just a set of patches available on
> top on Plan 9. It's not a full distribution like 9atom
> or 9front.
>
> I didn't want to run my own replica server, having
> to keep the whole repository synchronized with Plan 9.
>
> Instead, I chose to simply provide a list of patches
> that any Plan 9 user might find useful and install
> on its machine.
>
> If you choose to install from a 9legacy CD image, you
> will get updates from the /n/sources replica server.
>
> That said, now that Plan 9 is not as actively maintained
> as it used to be, 9legacy might move to his own
> full distribution.
>
> > 5) I am puzzled about licences. At one point I almost
> > thought that the software is actually BSD-like
> > (i.e. you can do almost whatever, no copyleft,
> > Lucent Public License Version 1.02). Now I read:
> >
> >     In February 2014 the University of California, Berkeley, has been
> >     authorised by the current Plan 9 copyright holder – Alcatel-Lucent
> >     – to release all Plan 9 software previously governed by the Lucent
> >     Public License, Version 1.02 under the GNU General Public License,
> >     Version 2
> >
> > so the mentioned univesity will offer it under GPL, which is viral
> > (is copyleft). That surprises me...
>
> Plan 9 is currently available under LPL 1.02 (/n/sources)
> or GPLv2 (https://github.com/brho/plan9).
>
> Unfortunately, this is a complicated story. Ron could tell you
> more about this. Alcatel-Lucent refused to distribute Plan 9
> under a more liberal licence than GPLv2.
>
> --
> David du Colombier
>
>