This is all my read on the situation only. I use 9atom and track the mainline closely, but only casually track 9front.
The mainline Plan 9 distribution from Bell Labs is managed very conservatively, from an external point of view. Both 9atom and, later, 9front were started because that didn't work for the folks who created those distributions, in different ways. It may be fair to say both started as a way to get improved hardware support into a publicly-accessible distribution quickly, although there have since been many other changes in each system. 9atom often pulls in changes from 9front and the mainline. I believe 9front watches the other two, as well (although I'm not sure how closely). As far as I'm aware, the mainline only considers changes in the others if they're explicitly submitted as patches. 9atom is, procedurally, very similar to mainline: you submit changes via patches, sources and everything else is available via 9p, and so on. It also puts similar weight on compatibility and similar concerns. 9front is a more radical departure for Plan 9 (in some ways making it more recognizable for those coming from elsewhere in the Open Source world), with a Mercurial repository and a conventional issue tracker and the like. It is also has a bit more of an experimental character regarding changes to the system. The GPL thing has no bearing on any of these distributions. Anthony
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