Plan9 is now Officially Open Source

DrSkwid writes "The OSI have approved the revised license for the plan 9 operating system according to attendees returning from this year's Usenix Bof."

Comments

Re:How long until?

[thoolihan]

I know you're kidding, but this brings up an interesting question. IIRC, Dennis Ritchie worked on Plan 9. He also wrote the original Unix at Bell Labs. If he wrote certain functions similarly (as one would expect him to reuse code snippets he had successfully written before), could there be intellectual property issues. Could a company in SCO's position claim that he has to completely avoid writing anything that similar to the code he wrote for a previous company?

Just a thought...

-t

Long term, does this mean anything?

[Jack William Bell]

My first subject line was 'Cool', but then I changed it. Why? Well, I have been interested in Plan 9 for a long time. I especially like the services-based architecture. In many ways it is a project with an awful lot of potential. But...

Problem 1: What is it good for? Right now Plan 9 has no compelling applications and a dearth of the applications most people use daily. This might be fixed soon as people port things like OpenOffice to it, but don't hold your breath.

Problem 2: It is a research tool, and may never be more than that. Chances are, any truly compelling features in Plan 9 will soon find their way into Linux and even MS Windows.

Problem 3: Overcoming the installed base. It took Linux nearly ten years to achieve name recognition, and it still is running a distant third on the desktop. What does Plan 9 offer that would make me, or you, want to spend time installing and learning it? Especially considerint Problem 2 and Problem 1.

Problem 4: Wrong direction. In my opinion the real important projects right now are ones that are removing the distinctions between OSs. Cross platform tools like Python, Chandler, Mono and Mozilla. Using standards-based DHTML as the UI. Why add another platform to the mix when the real goal is to become platform agnostic?

It all sums up to the same issues that squeak smalltalk has: Everything about it is great, but no-one uses it for anything real.

Of course all these problems I describe are based on my opinions, needs and preferences. Your mileage may vary. But I be most people's won't...

Re:Open Source, only in US and Canda

[russcox]

This is NOT true.

We do IP address checks to make sure you're in a country that the U.S. allows us to export crypto to, and that is all.