> The image this brought to mind was Buddhism. Would Buddhism be better > if it were infused with Evangelism? Doubtful.
As a very young Roman Catholic, I was quite taken by evangelism, I still have embarrassing memories of shedding a tear for a missionary amongst the lepers contracting leprosy himself. Today, I fail to see _any_ reason why a faith principle should even be _allowed_ to evangelise, nevermind that if it had any value it would be embraced automatically. I have the same problem with Plan 9. If the world wanted to see value in it, it would look harder than the resistance to popularisation that has defined Plan 9 development since 1995 when I first encountered it. By the same token, I don't expect others to provide the services I would find useful, even when I believe that what I would benefit from would be of general use to the community. Most new arrivals here fail to see that simply because Plan 9 isn't fashionable, there just isn't an infinite number of monkeys generating an infinite number of programs, some of which may even turn out handy. I miss some of these exceptional developments myself, but I'm not prepared to sacrifice the largely disciplined nature of Plan 9 to the largely undisciplined desires of the bazaar, by whatever name it may go. It's also a genie that won't go back in the bottle, and that ought to be cause to be really careful. What does get iritating is that yes, one could drop any resistance to change, but none of the objectives would be attained: Plan 9 would not be any more popular - Linux is still going to be streets ahead in popularity; the base of available programs wouldn't grow at any speed, because we'd still need someone to make the autoconf tools, GCC, G++ and BASH work under Plan 9, and that is no small task, specially if you include the resistance on the other side to accept Plan 9-oriented adjustments to their code. Reality is, Plan 9 is not a better Unix or a better Linux, it is itself. If you want something else, feel free to adopt Plan 9 as your foundation, but don't expect anyone here to follow you. Some may, but you can be certain with only the slightest shadow of doubt that no one here is going to _lead_ you where you think Plan 9 ought to be going. You'll have to be the path finder in that exercise. And if you haven't quite understood the implications, basically the Plan 9 community isn't going to put any effort in making Plan 9 more palatable to those who miss the features they have grown addicted to on other platforms: we're not going to do the work you wish done, consciously or subconsciously, on your behalf. You know it's too big a job, we know it's too big a job. Difference is, we don't want to do it while you think it may just happen if you can convince us it's for the greater good. That's where faith comes in and where logic walks out. ++L
