@Tristan
yes, that's what I wanted explain with GSoC. Need be something what realy brings the Plan 9 system forward I think.
Also, you maybe never use a printer or any other hardware devices, with me and most business applications it is just opposite.
Since I can remember there are 2 branche lines in IT and in Germany they devided the professions into technical informatic and economic informatic people. It means, that some people will program in the inner parts of the operating system, drivers etc. and others will program the upper parts of the user programs, specialy the presentation part, the database, the business application ...

Therefore, it makes good sense, that if those from the economic informatic people that doing the upper level programs for example with Limbo in our case, get some basics like the driver problems done by the technical informatic people.

The technical people will not find the way to write the right user programs and the economic people will not find the right way to write the device drivers etc. Therefore, the aspect of a user-oriented device support at the GSoC I like much. For those programers like me a computer without a printer is like a car without seats. You can drive with such car, but important parts are so strong missing, that I not have such an entusiasm to drive with such a car longer than needed. And this is something that need be changed if anybody wants that this car is used more. Ok, if this operating system only "just for fun" you not need seats in a car. But if you want reach more, you need.

Also what John says I like: It's good to have a good GUI library. I still not know if this should be something like a curses library, something text based like in midnight-commander or mut etc. or a real grafic advantage. I fear that a GUI library fast ends in an endless complex ressource eating object oriented subsystem what not represents the small size and efficiency of this procedural system as it is now. At the end, the GUI will be 100 times bigger than the whole system: Such I expect with an object oriented modern GUI system. And if this happens, I will more and more think why I not install Ubuntu with it new GTK etc. 

We programed in DOS with a layer direct to the 0xb800 memory, it was not oriented at endless complex active structures, it was a passiv but well working high efficient GUI system, based on memory layers as matching for a normal 2D text GUI. We had such things like Borland Turbo Vision, I liked the programing in this high efficient IDE. So, for me, this is an idea what can match to such a small high efficient system like Plan 9. And with such an GUI I know at once companies that like to see this in their programs. We had such key shortcuts, such small prompts where can call small commands or following some menues with the order of menu numbers. Nothing of the modern systems can compete with such systems. Today the efficiency of modern presentation layer (GUI) becoming more and more bad, this .net webbased GUIs are the absolut efficiency catastrophy. My idea of a Plan 9 GUI in the context of John would be a high efficient GUI like in DOS times and not such tamagotschi shit like modern interfaces. It's only an expression of my feelings, not know if others can follow that experiences that I made?