The OSI have approved the revised license for the Plan9 operating system according to attendees returning from this year’s Usenix Bof, Slashdot.org reports.
Plan9 is Now Officially Open Source
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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The best news regarding operating systems I’ve read in months. I don’t know if the free software comunity will realize the potencial this piece of technical jewel has, but I would really like to see plan9 being given the attention it deserves. (I hope that doesn’t mean trying to port X or something like that to the system or trying to make it “compatible” with unix/linux add the cost of bypassing its paradigm)
I’m no legalese expert, but the new license sounds like just a restatement of the BSD License? So Plan9 is now BSD-licensed. /me starts migrating. Correct me if I’m wrong on the legalese… Been a Plan 9 fan for a long time, just couldn’t use it because of the serious lack of hardware support…
In other news: SCO sues Lucent Technologies for releasing Plan 9 source code because it damages the Unix reputation and … *cough*
Wonder how long before we see Debian GNU/Plan9 or something similar…
… porting all the linux-thinking tools and apps to plan9 and therefore making a compatibility layer or something like that, soon will we see things like Gnome VFS ported to a system that could offer a far better and elegant solution for problemas like that, and that is just the begining of getting plan9 into another unix rip-off being it the modern trend. My only hope is that someone deicides to make a distribution more consistent with the philosophy of the system.
will tell you that SCO owns it, and that it’s illegal to export because of terrorists.
It’s so wonderful to know that the first thought that seems to come into the heads of people ’round here is that the Free Software community will screw up any recently open-sourced software. As if Free Software has that much time on its hands… (What, isn’t Debian/FreeBSD stable yet?)
The more important question to me is that if the Free Software community decides to use the Plan9 source code, will they have the vision to understand the paradigm of Plan9? The worst that could happen is that Free Software won’t. But assuming that they won’t is somewhat premature, dontchathink?
I think must of they won’t. At least the largest part of the comunity, the ones who decide the flow of the projects, the fashion, will not take into account the paradigm. It is easier to walk again the same known paths, to use the same old powerhorses (parafracing a plan9 document). I have seen this trend too many times in the Free OS world lately to be optimistic. Soon will people start complaining for the lack of graphicals apps, worse, for the lack of X graphical apps, and there will soonner or later be a group implementing everything linux, no mather how out of place ir might be, on top of plan9
Not to be a license troll, but as previous posters mentioned Plan9 is “Open Source” but isn’t released under the GPL. That means no GNU/FSF association, so: No Debian GNU/Plan9.
Regardless of your experience with both Free Software projects and OSI approved projects, most of the developers familiar with Plan9 like it precisely because it uses a different conceptual architecture. They don’t want to make it into a good Linux (or Unix, or BSD) fork.
It’s a shame that it’s being open sourced now, instead of earlier when it might have been more useful.
The problem is that some of it’s paradigms are too far out there to survive against that which is entrenched today
Lots of great ideas in it though, i wish “OpenPlan9” or whatever becomes of it the very best.
Not to be a license troll, but as previous posters mentioned Plan9 is “Open Source” but isn’t released under the GPL. That means no GNU/FSF association, so: No Debian GNU/Plan9.
Just because it’s not GPLed doesn’t prevent Debian from playing with it…Look at Debian GNU/NetBSD and Debian GNU/FreeBSD for examples of this.
So yeah, I’m it’s only a matter of time before they add this OS to their list…
In fact I’m sure some Debian schmuck is downloading the source as I type this
I don’t draw that conclusion, at the very least, not yet. I haven’t heard anyone complain that there aren’t enough graphical apps for Freedos, for instance.
Personally, I’m excited when someone modifies one project to serve another, such as Cosmoe. But it does help to understand the underlying paradigm of any operating system, so that you know when you are changing that paradigm.
I think porting software from one OS to another always involves the potencial risk of bypassing the target OS’s paradigm at least in some ways. When the porting takes place between “Cousin” OSes (linux<->BSD<->OSX), the risk is very low, but when the two OS’s paradigms differ much, the programmer will have to force some ideas for the software to work in the new platform thus bypassing its paradigm in a greater degree.
Replying to: I’m no legalese expert, but the new license sounds like just a restatement of the BSD License?
I’m no legalese expert either, but the Lucent license protects the contributors more. The additions include licensing of contributor (but not third-party) patent rights (2b and 2c), prevention of patent lawsuits against contributors (8, 2nd para.), export protections (7), protection of contributors against liability claims (4), and various other clarifications.
Like the BSD licenses, it doesn’t restrict commercial distribution and such, except to require that such distributors take responsibility for their own actions and not give the contributors any flack about the contributions. It doesn’t prevent you from attacking contributors for unrelated reasons or going after unrelated parties for patent-violations though.
As far as I can tell, of course. Basically, it allows you to use the code for whatever you want as long as you don’t be an evil bastard to the contributors (you can be evil to everyone else). The BSD license is quite a bit less protective.
Theo rants, Stallman weighs in.
Plan 9 takes a bow.
Get ready kids, SCO can’t compete.
Scroll to 6-17-03
https://lists.cse.psu.edu/archives/9fans/2003-June.txt
of how I might apply something like Plan9 to my experimental activities (e.g., I’m really into computer music, and I really like Csound.)
I’m sure I’ll do some serious research into it, and I’d hope there aren’t any buttholes out there who think they can destroy it in a court or something.
This link may be easier to follow:
http://groups.google.com/groups?dq=&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&thr…
And hylas and Anonymous, congratulations for calling it “Plan 9” rather than leaving out the space which is wrong.
i know it was picky about drivers ect…………….
of how I might apply something like Plan9 to my experimental activities (e.g., I’m really into computer music, and I really like Csound.)
On Plan 9 it is unlikely you will find the tools or hardware support to create quality music as you would in a professional environment.
If you did not say “experimental” I would have simply told you it’s not for you. However, since you did, it gives me some leeway.
One of the key aspects of Plan 9 is it’s ability to network resources. This means it could be relatively simple to import the sound card, or multiple such sound cards, of other Plan 9 machines and start using them as if they were installed locally.
One example I know of, was a Plan 9 desktop was used to play mp3’s, but it imported the sound card of a iPaq handheld running Plan 9 (which was networked wirelessly). This is the Plan 9 way of looking at it.
If you take a more conventional view, you could say that the desktop was streaming mp3s to the iPaq. However, in the non-Plan 9 world, people would think you wrote a streaming server for the desktop, and a streaming client for the iPaq. But it isn’t, it’s not a particularly code-intensive setup. It’s just saying, “use the sound card on the iPaq instead of the one on this machine”.
Plan 9 lets you do that.
If by “experimental” you include sound sculptures, you might be able to have some fun with multiple machines arranged in 3D space, with the input, output, feedback and control of sound being shared between machines in interesting ways.
>>>It’s just saying, “use the sound card on the iPaq instead of the one on this machine”.
QNX already has that feature a long time ago.
This guy’s QNX-embedded Dreamcast already can use his QNX laptop’s soundcard.
http://boob.co.uk/cgi-bin/ikonboard3/ikonboard.cgi?act=ST;f=1;t=192…
QNX-embedded iPaq can access any QNX hardware devices in the whole QNET network.
http://207.198.90.123/ipaq_bsp/remote_access.html
..maybe Michael Jackson will, after buying up Ed Wood’s estate.
I’ve heard that Bell Labs has been downsized almost past recognition as a result of Lucent’s financial woes. Promising projects like semantic speech recognition have gotten cancelled and world class researchers let go, and I wonder if that didn’t play a role in this decision.
🙂 :O
>>>It’s just saying, “use the sound card on the iPaq instead of the one on this machine”.
>>QNX already has that feature a long time ago.
Perhaps it would be more polite to say it “has that feature also.” 😉
QNX often has a very sophisticated implementation of any OS concept. I see they seem to have QoS and multiple redudant channels available for Qnet.
Plan 9 is often the originator of many of these ideas including the /proc device in Linux. Their implementation is often the simplest because it is part of the overall design and not an extension of something existing.
Qnet is an (admittedly natural) extension of QNX Neutrino RTOS, as such you see such exportable devices duplicated in the /net heirarchy. Plan 9 implements this in the kernel and it is the only way to do things outside the kernel.
Plan 9 is still a research OS. QNX is a commercially proven implementation.
What sets Plan 9 apart from QNX is that Plan 9 uses authentication servers to authenticate messages and files — plan 9 has no root or superuser.