Re: [9fans] interesting potential targets for plan 9 and/or inferno

[lucio@proxima.alt.za]

> We're missing each other. The initial point of discussion was "what
> are the barriers for the adoption of plan 9?" not the development
> model or what is the "right" way to do things. My post was not meant
> to advocate making rio "prettier". I hope I made that clear.
> 
I'm sure you're right, and I ought to have pointed out at the outset
that the adoption of Plan 9 by lots of users is not the good thing
that it seems to be.  In fact, in my opinion, it is not even likely as
it would be, as discussed here, by imitation, which is hardly the role
Plan 9 should be playing.

> What I would like to reiterate, though, is that the expectations of a
> typical user, even a very smart one, differ from Plan 9 community. If
> we could better understand that difference and couch Plan 9 advocacy
> in terms a regular user can more readily understand Plan 9 advocacy
> would be much more effective.

But we'd waste enormous resources in exactly the wrong direction.
Plan 9 has an appeal of itself.  It is hardly sensible to try to cast
Bette Midler in Claudia Schiffer's role.  Teaching Claudia Schiffer to
act (or sing) like Bette Midler may be more successful, but the result
isn't a certainty.

I'm sorry we (I, in particular) lost the thread of this conversation,
as you point out.  I think it should be made clear as soon as the
subject is raised that Plan 9 is not anywhere near ready for broad
acceptance, largely because it would entail straying very far from its
fundamentals, but also because the active community, meaning the
contributors, are much more likely to focus on Plan 9's unique
properties than on imitating Windows.

Perhaps we could (re)assemble an FAQ in which this feature of Plan 9
would be made much clearer, with corroborating evidence from the realm
of those assets that the mainstream OSes are still struggling to
acquire.

++L

PS: I think Plan 9's biggest "mistake" was to drop Alef where it
should have become the _only_ development language.  I know this is
absolute pie-in-the-sky and I accept without qualification the
motivation for dropping Alef.  But a lot of discussion would have been
avoided if there wasn't so much C code out there waiting to be
adopted, poorly, into the Plan 9 fold.  Andrey's "libssh" is very much
a case in point, but anything APE could be used as an example.  I do
not intend any disrespect by this, I'm merely pointing out that C
raises expectations of Plan 9 that are not realistic.  Plan
9-with-Alef became Inferno and no-one is suggesting that _it_ should
be more widely adopted by adding Linux or Windows features to it.

In summary, I think the subject needs resolving.  The derided "road
map" for Plan 9 should be a topic for study and contribution, as much
as are P9P and APE ports, although it is understandable that we all
only have the resources (or motivation) to contribute when we're stung
personally :-)