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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."
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How long until SCO claim that SCO IP was stolen and put into plan9?
There is no god
It's not too shabby:
Plan 9 is designed around the basic principle that all resources appear as files in a hierarchical file system (namespace) which is unique to each process. These resources are accessed via a network-level protocol called 9P which hides the exact location of services from the user. All servers provide their services as an exported hierarchy of files.
Features
The dump file system makes a daily "snapshot" of the filestore available to users
Unicode character set support throughout the system
Advanced kernel synchronization facilities for parallel processing
ANSI/POSIX environment emulator (APE)
Plumbing, a language driven way for applications to communicate
Acme - an editor, shell and window system for programmers
Sam - a screen editor with structural regular expressions
Support for MIME mail messages and IMAP4
Security - there is no super-user or root, and passwords are never sent over the network
There is no god
it's the bunny rabbit that lends itself to the business-saavy of this OS!
must.. have.. the bunny OS!!
Latest release notes
Download the source (Warning: requires identification--privacy advocates maybe be excluded here)
This is really great news for Linux. For too long we've been trapped in the out-moded hierarchical/graphical paradigm. Plan 9, with its revolutionary "factotum" and "secstore" structures, could really provide a breadth of fresh hair to the Linux kernal, putting it head and shoulders above Windows.
It is sooo coool. It is more than just a typical OS. Is is a distributed OS. Really. Not a cluster like you often think about. Before you look at the screen shots and say "boy, that looks crappy", read the design.
dammit.. another operating system to try out.... and only 2 computers.
I write code.
This is great news for the Open Source community. While Plan9 is often rediculed as being outdated, it no doubt has its share of novel and useful algorithms, which may now be incorporated into more mainstream open source OSes such as Linux and the HURD (yes, it's still around).
Open sourcing OS code has proven to be a good way to keep ailing systems relevant in the current marketplace. It kept BeOS and VMS from dying in obscurity, and even helped BSD limp along for a few more years.
I predict nothing but good things from GNU/Plan9. Hopefully Debian will introduce a Plan9 distro, to go with their Darwin, HURD, and Linux distrii. I still have a few spare boxen lying around that I could use this on.
Boromir, son of Faramir, King of Gondor and Minas Tirith
Ah... another slashbot humour cliche is born. *sniff* WE WILL HAVE SCO JOKES FOR YEARS! REJOICE IN THE NETWORK-TV-LIKE LACK OF ORIGINALITY!
Beowulf clusters of those! SCO claims infringement! Hot grits down Natalie Portman's pants!
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...
- -
Are you an SF Fan? Are you a Tru-Fan?
The reasons aren't obvious. I've seen this myth before, notably from Microsoft employees. The idea that you can be "infected" by simply looking at GPLd code is nonsense. The GPL explicitly covers only derived works of the code. If you looked at a GPLd algorithm and reimplemented it, somebody would have a hell of a time arguing in court that it was "derived". This is doubly the case for the vast majority of GPLd code, which is written by people who don't have huge piles of cash and who probably have a disdain for the legal system as well.
The idea that some random geek, or even a big company, is going to sue you on a legal platform as wobbly as "judge, he looked at it, so the rest of his work is clearly based on ours" is somewhere slightly above absolute zero and in any case applies just as equally to proprietary code, as the case of SCO shows.
Ironically, proprietary code is generally far more "infectious". I work on Wine - if I were to have seen the Windows code, I would be immediately banned from working on it, indeed, probably I'd be banned from working on most GPLd code. The EULA for Windows is extremely vague about such things, and Microsoft have armies of lawyers and it's quite feasable for them to sue me or others on a virtually non-existant legal basis. The reverse is not true.
I see that this post has been marked as a troll. I'm not sure it was, but this FUD should not be propogated any further regardless.
No, it's UNIX that came from outer space. Specifically, it came from the Roswell UFO. Microsoft has even used this alien technology for mind control
The Uncoveror: It's the real news.
It seems that this rewrite was an attempt to address Richard's concerns. That said I think some of these issues may still be valid, but IANAL.
The policy of the United States is worse than bad---it is insane. -- Ludwig von Mises, Economic Policy(1959)
John Fogerty sued for sounding like John Fogerty!
Fortunately, he won that case, but who knows how a similar case in the computer industry would turn out?
Curb CO2 emissions: Kill yourself today!
It's Bell Lab's design for the successor to Unix, learning from Unix's successes and failures.
Instead of everything being a file, everything's a file system. Instead of processes communicating through pipes, everything communicates through plumbing (like a cross between pipes and an email system).
It's tiny, coherent, and elegant. I really hope we see more of it.
-Billy
While researching cluster software for my current project, I read some whitepapers showing the differences between Plan 9, Beowulf, Mosix and others. I recommend that read.
Non-Linux Penguins ?
"What would really be cool is if some of the GUI concepts made it over to Linux..."
They already have. Have a look at these:
9wm - a window manger that acts like 8 1/2 from Plan 9
Wily - a clone of Plan 9s programmers editor, Acme (v cool)
There's also WindowLab, another window manager which uses the same window resizing system as Plan 9.
I'm sure there's more that I don't know of...
Our web server and FTP server serve the same files. /hidden is the exception to the rule, meaning that you can't list that directory using the FTP server (or the web server). We use it for things we don't want people stumbling upon. The license files were kept there when we were doing the initial OSI approval, and we just haven't moved them yet.
I worked on this license. It is NOT viral.
It's basically the IBM license but changed not to be viral. Contributions must be covered by the same license, but that only applies if you declare your changes to be a Contribution.
If you want to take the code and go work on a closed project, no problem.
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.
Fortunately, he won that case, ...
Yeah, but he also lost!
SteveM
Don't talk about compatable. GPL isn't compatable with BSD license, so we can't use your guy's code. You guys can take all you want, but we can't take. I like how GPL is "free".
Please.
First, which part of "this will contribute to Linux" didn't you understand? Linux has absolutely nothing to do with the FreeBSD license, so spreading your divisive nonsense in this thread is woefully off-topic.
Second, the FreeBSD license is perfectly compatible with the GPL. It is also compatible with Microsoft's proprietary license, not to mention anyone elses. The fact that the GPL isn't compatible with FreeBSD (meaning you can't take GPLed code and incorporate it into FreeBSD-licensed code), and the fact that Microsoft's proprietary license is likewise incompatible, is entirely irrelevant.
Indeed, that one-way compatability was a deliberate decision made by the FreeBSD folks...who valued the developer's freedom to incorporate their hard work into proprietary products over the protection of the freedom of future developers and users. Which is a perfectly legitimate stance to take, though it just so happens to be in disagreement with the decision by the GPL folks to protect their users and derivative developers freedoms above even their own.
It is extraordinarilly disingenuous to criticize one free licenses philosophy and imply it to somehow be improper, when the very same license has led to FreeBSD code being included in products which protect neither the developers, nor the users freedom, such as Microsoft's usage of the FreeBSD network stack. Before lambasting the thousands of volunteers who have contributed millions of man hours for FREE, to enhance your FREEDOM, merely because you disagree with the aspects of freedom they choose to emphesize over the ones you would emphesize (if any, which I find questionable in this particular troll), perhaps you would like to address the use of FREE code in products that strip all said FREEDOMs away? Until you justify lambasting the 1-way compatability between two free licenses while ignorning the same 1-way compatability between FreeBSD and virtually every proprietary license, your entire argument devolves to hypocritical grandstanding, misinformation, and spin.
The GPL is free. FreeBSD is free. In different ways, with different protections, different emphesises on different aspects of freedom, and with different consiquences. Most of us who use FreeBSD are perfectly comfortable with this, and understand the differences that are part of the diversity of our community. Most of us who use GNU/Linux are likewise understanding and appreciative of both schools of thought, and can recognize the advantages and limitations of both.
It is only the few zealots on either side, and much more commonly divisive trolls like yourself, for whome this concept poses such difficulty.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy