I think your first, best bet is to try to find out what the Plan 9 community needs, rather than adding on something that might not be the that important. I have not heard anyone express a need for zeroconf in Plan 9, but maybe I'm missing something.
Simple example: file systems on Plan 9 are slow. Why is that? How do they work? How would you go about finding out how to make them faster? Linux has oprofile and (now) ftrace. Would either of these be helpful? Another simple example: networking on Plan 9 could be faster. What makes it less than it could be? How would you figure out how to fix it? Another example: we don't have much in the way of current graphics drivers. Why is that? How would you fix it? One mechanism we use to support graphics is VESA mode, which does not work in SMP. Why is that? Could you fix VESA code to work in SMP? This last project (VESA) is pretty self-contained and easily defined, you might want to start there. I think you need to spend some time climbing the learning curve before picking a project. ron
