On Thu, Aug 13, 2026, at 4:51 AM, [email protected] wrote: > On Wed, Aug 12, 2026, at 12:02, C wrote: >> I assume most modern driver work is being done in 9front, and then people >> might port the code to 9legacy or their own branch. >> Permalink >> <https://9fans.topicbox.com/groups/9fans/T46370b0d2f10b254-M083e078ffb9af80ec4526e13> > Good observation. I am certain that at least one person has moved away > from open source and chosen to pursue their own work, myself included.
Speaking as a long-time member of this list, years ago, Plan 9 development was typically private, only descriptions of the work done were shared. If I remember right, people doing that mostly left when the last maintainer of Plan 9 at Bell Labs left. There were exceptions; some open source forks, but 9front is the only one left from that era. A handful of academic forks were done with when the paper was published, or in the case of Plan B, superseded by the Inferno-based Octopus. Coraid's 9atom was well-maintained and widely liked, but it died when they switched to Solaris and went bust. mycroftiv's crazy-wonderful ANTS and associated 9gridchan were shelved due to concerns in allowing just anyone to be part of the grid and host stuff on it. (It didn't help that "Somewhere deep inside [ANTS}, a small and beautiful system is struggling to get out." The added code was a big mess! ;) And of course 9front was started due to that one last maintainer apparently not having enough time. > This raises a simple question: if one has the skills to develop and > maintain software independently, what is the marginal benefit of > sharing it? > > Open source provides benefits such as collaboration, review, reuse, and > wider adoption, but also introduces costs in maintenance, support, > governance, and loss of control. > > There is also value in keeping technical projects separate from > political or ideological positions. > > Ultimately, whether to share is a trade-off. In some cases, the > rational choice is to keep the work private. It certainly provides > greater peace of mind. I used to be a true believer in open source. Over the years, I've learned all those lessons, at first grudgingly, but now I'm happier for it. One I'd add is that code you only write for yourself can sometimes be much simpler because you're only providing for your own needs. It doesn't always work out, but I like to hard-code most options because it's no problem for me to just change the code. Or, to take an extreme case, I code Forth in a way which relies on me knowing how not to crash it while playing directly with memory. ;) ------------------------------------------ 9fans: 9fans Permalink: https://9fans.topicbox.com/groups/9fans/T46370b0d2f10b254-M481561044f45ab0128c558fb Delivery options: https://9fans.topicbox.com/groups/9fans/subscription
