[TUHS] Re: forgotten versions

[Dan Cross <crossd@gmail.com>]

On Sun, Jun 19, 2022 at 2:33 PM Theodore Ts'o <tytso@mit.edu> wrote:
> On Sun, Jun 19, 2022 at 10:47:23AM -0400, Kenneth Goodwin wrote:
> > Just chiming in a bit..
> >
> > Rob, it might be interesting to old geezers like me as well as newbies
> > entering the field to get a perspective on Plan 9 and its evolution. The
> > motivations behind it. What your group was trying to accomplish,  the
> > approach, pitfalls and the entire decision making process as things went
> > along. Even things that went horribly wrong and what happened etc.
>
> I'll second that.  I think it would be really helpful.
>
> There was a time when I was reviewing a paper which made a bunch of
> claims about what Plan 9 was trying to accomplish and in particular
> about what the ultimate design goals for a particular component of
> Plan 9.  (I won't go into further details since as far as I know, that
> paper was never published.)
>
> In any case, since I wasn't familiar with the history of Plan 9 to
> evaluate these claims, with the permission of the PC chairs, I found
> someone who had been part of the Plan 9 team, and asked them to review
> certain passages for accuracy, and they said, "Uh, no.... that's
> totally not the case.  They're completely wrong."
>
> So if someone were willing to create additional write ups about
> lessons learned, or if that's too much work, maybe someone could do
> some interview for a podcast or a vlog, that would be really
> excellent.

Agreed. A retrospective would be a very welcome addition to the canon.

        - Dan C.

(PS: I _had_ heard of the VAX effort before, but I don't think I'd known
quite how nascent it was before it was abandoned in favor of MIPS and
68k.)