There was Plan 9 source available, but the early releases were in the AT&T
Unix mode and required some payment or academic connection. The early demo
disks might not have had source - I don't remember - but if not, there was
simply no room on a floppy. The CD releases had full source.

Plan 9 was a research system. It was hoped that maybe one day it would
become a commercial success, but that was never the prime motivation. It
only "failed" as a product, and there are many contributing factors there,
including existing systems that were good enough, a desire for people to
have "workstations" and ignore the benefits of a completing window UI on a
mainframe (Cray was an exception, earlier), and AT&T lawyers refusing to
think realistically about open source (about as polite a way I can express
a multiyear fight that never ended, only fizzled into stalemate).

As a research system, Plan 9 was a huge success. We're still talking about
its ideas 30+ years on.

-rob


On Tue, Jan 31, 2023 at 8:24 AM Larry McVoy <lm@mcvoy.com> wrote:

> On Mon, Jan 30, 2023 at 02:03:32PM -0500, Dan Cross wrote:
> > On Mon, Jan 30, 2023 at 11:18 AM Larry McVoy <lm@mcvoy.com> wrote:
> > > On Mon, Jan 30, 2023 at 11:09:03AM -0500, Dan Cross wrote:
> > > > On Mon, Jan 30, 2023 at 10:45 AM Larry McVoy <lm@mcvoy.com> wrote:
> > > > > On Mon, Jan 30, 2023 at 10:35:25AM -0500, Dan Cross wrote:
> > > > > > Plan 9 was different, and a lot of people who were familiar with
> Unix
> > > > > > didn't like that, and were not interested in trying out a
> different
> > > > > > way if it meant that they couldn't bring their existing mental
> models
> > > > > > and workflows into the new environment unchanged.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > At one point it struck me that Plan 9 didn't succeed as a
> widespread
> > > > > > replacement for Unix/Linux because it was bad or incapable, but
> > > > > > rather, because people wanted Linux, and not plan9.
> > > > >
> > > > > Many people make that mistake.  New stuff instead of extend old
> stuff.
> > > >
> > > > Some would argue that's not a mistake. How else do we innovate if
> > > > we're just incrementally polishing what's come before?
> > >
> > > I didn't say limit yourself to polishing, I said try and not invalidate
> > > people's knowledge while innovating.
> > >
> > > Too many people go down the path of doing things very differently and
> > > they rationalize that they have to do it that way to innovate.  That's
> > > fine but it means it is going to be harder to get people to try your
> > > new stuff.
> > >
> > > The point I'm trying to make is that "different" is a higher barrier,
> > > much, much higher, than "extend".  People frequently ignore that and
> > > that means other people ignore their work.
> > >
> > > It is what it is, I doubt I'll convice anyone so I'll drop it.
> >
> > Oh, I don't know. I think it's actually kind of important to see _why_
> > people didn't want to look deeper into plan9 (for example). The system
> > had a lot to offer, but you had to dig a bit to get into it; a lot of
> > folks never got that far. If it was really lack of job control, then
> > that's a shame.
>
> It's certainly not just job control.  I think it's a combo of being
> unfamiliar, no source (at first I believe) and Linux was already
> pretty far along.
>
> The lesson is that if there is an installed base, and you want people
> to move, you have to make that easy and there has to be a noticeable
> gain.  Plan 9 sounded cool to me but Linux was easy.
> --
> ---
> Larry McVoy           Retired to fishing
> http://www.mcvoy.com/lm/boat
>