Re: [9fans] Formation of a Plan 9 Core Team

[sirjofri <sirjofri+ml-9fans@sirjofri.de>]

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26.01.2024 10:49:42 Frank D. Engel, Jr. <fde101@fjrhome.net>:

> From my perspective, Plan 9 was split into two forks: 9legacy for people who don't want it to move forward but simply to be maintained, and 9front for people who want the project to move forward and continue to grow.
> 
> Having a core team for "Plan 9" at this point would be kind of pointless as the name was a real product at one time but now encompasses a collection of related forks of what was once a product, so such a team would need to form around one particular fork.
> 
> Having a core team basically expresses the goal of moving the project forward, so if a core team were to form right now, it would be for 9front, or around a new fork with a similar set of common ideals (maybe we move on to Plan 10?), since moving forward is kind of the antithesis of what 9legacy seems to be about.

That sounds about right. Basically everything you said.

Any attempt to release an official new edition of Plan 9 would be a fork.

I personally think it is ok for 9legacy to just maintain the original version and not move the project forward. I think 9front tries to stay as compatible as possible at runtime (so same binary formats, same protocols, basically Plan 9 4th "plus").

What OP wants might include breaking changes that break compatibility on some system layers. Probably not on a level of protocols or something, but filesystems might change, probably a complete new window manager, graphics acceleration, a different plumber and lots and lots of more "modern" software (anyone wanna port firefox or chrome? ;) ). That might really be a Plan 10 at some point.

I very much believe that this should be a fork, probably with some kinda package manager to make larger parts optional. Not everyone needs everything. Plan 9 as it is right now can include many things without asking, because they're so small. Imagine bundling a 100M graphics driver with Plan 9, including the source! No, thanks.

Back to topic with some question to the OP (and please, please, don't take it personally or something): Is it possible that you want to contribute to Plan 9 but don't know where to start? I remember, when I started with Plan 9, I wanted to improve many things, contribute everything I could, until I realized that many things are like they are on purpose. I was often grounded by people like ori, hiro, mycroftiv, kvik and a few others on grid, as well as cat-v. I learned that being part of Plan 9 does not necessarily mean contributing large chunks of code, or changing many things to be "better" (whatever better means).

sirjofri

P.S.: sorry Frank, I clicked the wrong reply button. Of course this should go to the mailing list.

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