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From: ron minnich <rminnich@gmail.com>
To: Rob Pike <robpike@gmail.com>
Cc: tuhs@tuhs.org
Subject: [TUHS] Re: FD 2
Date: Mon, 30 Jan 2023 14:50:37 -0800	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <CAP6exYKwwGLH_d79iHj=Wg3psT0tn4d35xM6j9ZQUS23bUYJ3g@mail.gmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <CAKzdPgyeCDbteSfcroubjGE_L7YO_MNZL2QxY=oZhUTG4xqhjg@mail.gmail.com>

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It's a long list of ideas that came from Plan 9 into Unix.

One of those wonderful plan 9 ideas, the cpu command, with all it implies,
has new life: github.com/u-root/cpu. Several companies are using the cpu
command as the basis of light weight VM and edge environments, for example.

Also, rfork went into freebsd ca 1996, and it's still there. Al Viro, IIRC,
put some stuff into his VFS ca 1998 that specifically came from plan 9,
including private mounts. We used them at LANL to build private name spaces
for cluster nodes, over 9p, as part of Clustermatic.

Some core ideas of controlling subsystems via writable synthetics also made
it in.

And on and on.

On Mon, Jan 30, 2023 at 2:17 PM Rob Pike <robpike@gmail.com> wrote:

> 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
>>
>

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  reply	other threads:[~2023-01-30 22:52 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 69+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2023-01-20 22:44 [TUHS] " ron minnich
2023-01-20 22:54 ` [TUHS] " G. Branden Robinson
2023-01-20 22:56 ` Rob Pike
2023-01-20 23:11   ` Larry McVoy
2023-01-20 23:14     ` Rob Pike
2023-01-20 23:22       ` Larry McVoy
2023-01-20 23:13 ` Douglas McIlroy
2023-01-21  3:37 ` Jon Steinhart
2023-01-21 15:42 ` Clem Cole
2023-01-21 17:34   ` Warner Losh
2023-01-21 17:50     ` Warner Losh
2023-01-21 18:26       ` Clem Cole
2023-01-21 18:37         ` Warner Losh
2023-01-22 11:05           ` Jonathan Gray
2023-01-22 21:23           ` Warner Losh
2023-01-22 22:10             ` ron minnich
2023-01-23  7:30             ` arnold
2023-01-23  8:32               ` James Johnston
2023-01-23  8:58                 ` G. Branden Robinson
2023-01-23 11:49                   ` Brantley Coile
2023-01-23 14:25                     ` Ronald Natalie
2023-01-23 17:43                       ` Brantley Coile
2023-01-23 16:59                 ` Douglas McIlroy
2023-01-24  7:21                   ` arnold
2023-01-29 18:51             ` Warner Losh
2023-01-29 19:20               ` Ron Natalie
2023-01-29 20:25                 ` Warner Losh
2023-01-30  7:50                   ` arnold
2023-01-30  8:09                     ` Rob Pike
2023-01-30 15:02                       ` Larry McVoy
2023-01-30 15:16                         ` Dan Cross
2023-01-30 15:27                           ` Larry McVoy
2023-01-30 15:35                             ` Dan Cross
2023-01-30 15:45                               ` Larry McVoy
2023-01-30 16:09                                 ` Dan Cross
2023-01-30 16:18                                   ` Larry McVoy
2023-01-30 19:03                                     ` Dan Cross
2023-01-30 19:12                                       ` Brantley Coile
2023-01-30 21:24                                       ` Larry McVoy
2023-01-30 22:15                                         ` Rob Pike
2023-01-30 22:50                                           ` ron minnich [this message]
2023-01-30 23:05                                           ` [TUHS] Child of plan9? (Re: " Bakul Shah
2023-01-31  3:19                                             ` [TUHS] " Andrew Warkentin
2023-01-30 16:21                                   ` [TUHS] " Steve Nickolas
2023-01-30 16:27                                     ` Larry McVoy
2023-01-30 16:32                                       ` ron minnich
2023-01-30 16:40                                       ` Clem Cole
2023-01-30 19:55                                       ` Lawrence Stewart
2023-01-31 21:27                                     ` Dave Horsfall
2023-01-30 16:48                                   ` Theodore Ts'o
2023-01-30 16:57                                   ` Andy Kosela
2023-01-30 17:04                                     ` Warner Losh
2023-01-30 20:38                                       ` Theodore Ts'o
2023-01-30 21:01                                         ` Warner Losh
2023-01-30 21:10                                         ` Clem Cole
2023-01-30 16:03                           ` Bakul Shah
2023-01-30 16:07                             ` Larry McVoy
2023-01-30 16:13                               ` Bakul Shah
2023-01-30 16:22                                 ` Steve Nickolas
2023-01-30 16:17                               ` Dan Cross
2023-01-30 16:18                             ` Ralph Corderoy
2023-01-30 16:41                               ` [TUHS] job control (Re: " Bakul Shah
2023-01-30 19:07                               ` [TUHS] " Dan Cross
2023-01-30 13:26                     ` John Cowan
2023-01-30 14:30                       ` arnold
2023-01-30  0:25                 ` Phil Budne
2023-01-30  2:08                   ` Warner Losh
2023-01-21 18:27     ` Clem Cole
2023-01-22 10:56       ` Jaap Akkerhuis via TUHS

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