this is the "space-shuttle dichotomy." it's a false one. it's a
continuum. its ends are dangerous.
So somewhere in the middle is the golden mean? I have no objections to
that. *BSD systems very well represent a silver, if not a golden,
mean--just my idea, of course.
it is interesting to me that some software manages to run off both
ends of this continuum at the same time. in linux your termcap
from 1981 will still work, but software written to access /sys last
year is likely out-of-date.
While I won't vouch for Linux as a good OS (user-land and kernel combined)
I understand what you see as its eccentricity is merely a side-effect of
openness. Tighten the development up and you get a BSD-style system
(committer/contributor/maintainer/grunt/user highest-to-lowest ranking,
with a demiurge position for Theo de Raadt). Tighten it even further up
with in-ken shared among a core group of old-timers and thoroughbreds
transmitted only to serious researchers and you get Plan 9.
You are right, after all. It all lies on a continuum. Actually, more
tightly regulated Linux distros such as Slackware readily demonstrate that;
they easily beat all-out all-open distros like Fedora (whose existence is
probably perceived at Red Hat as a big brainstorming project).
your insinuation that *bsd is a real serious system and plan 9 is
a research system doesn't make any historical sense to me. they
both started as research systems. i am not aware of any law that
prevents a system that started as a research project from becoming
a serious production system.
What I am insinuating is more like this: any serious system will sooner or
later have to grow warts and/or contract herpes. That's an unavoidable
consequence of social life. If you do insist that Plan 9 has no warts, or
far less warts than the average, or that it has never seen a cold sore on
its upper lip then I'll happily conclude it has never lived socially. And I
haven't really ever used Plan 9 or "been into it." The no-herpes indicator
is that strong.
i know of many thousands of plan 9 systems in production right
now.
Good for you. Honestly.
--On Thursday, April 09, 2009 11:06 AM -0400 erik quanstrom
<quans...@quanstro.net> wrote:
On Thu Apr 9 10:48:08 EDT 2009, eris.discor...@gmail.com wrote:
Most of it in the 19 lines for one TERMCAP variable. Strictly a relic of
the past kept with all good intentions: backward compatibility, and
heeding
[...]
Quite a considerable portion of UNIX-like systems, FreeBSD in this case,
is the way it is not because the developers are stupid, rather because
they have a "constituency" to tend to. They aren't carefree researchers
with high ambitions.
this is the "space-shuttle dichotomy." it's a false one. it's a
continuum. its ends are dangerous.
on the one hand, if you change things, the new things are likely
to be buggy. on the space shuttle, this is bad. people die.
on the other hand, systems are not perfect. and if the problems
are not addressed, eventually the system will need to much fixing
and will be abandoned.
yet bringing a new system on line is an even bigger risk. everything
is new simultaneously.
it is interesting to me that some software manages to run off both
ends of this continuum at the same time. in linux your termcap
from 1981 will still work, but software written to access /sys last
year is likely out-of-date.
your insinuation that *bsd is a real serious system and plan 9 is
a research system doesn't make any historical sense to me. they
both started as research systems. i am not aware of any law that
prevents a system that started as a research project from becoming
a serious production system.
i know of many thousands of plan 9 systems in production right
now.
- erik
