"My reply in THIS thread was that Plan 9
was never a mainstream commercial
sucess, and commending on Ken Thompson's
use of the phrase "[Linux] will
probably not be very suscessful"."
"I remember a lot of buzz in the mid 90's
that Plan 9 was designed to be the next
"Unix killer", and then the project got
pulled. If you go through Bell Labs web
pages on Plan 9, there is a comment that
there is no on at Bell working on it,
instead most members got pulled to Inferno,
or other projects."
"AND I stated that my impression was that
technically, Plan 9 was a very good and
elegant system. It just didn't go anywhere."
- ------------------------------------------------------------
Plan-9 suffered the same fate as OS/2, NeXT, and BeOS. Despite the elegances and
innovations of all the above products, they've flopped in the marketplace
because they were wrongly positioned.
This is how they have been positioned:
IBM positioned OS/2 as "A Better Window than Windows";
Plan-9 was positioned as "Unix-NG";
NeXT was positioned as a "More Intuitive Mac"; and
BeOS tried to be a "Better Power-PC".
All of them have failed because they tried to be "Better Mousetraps."
Anyone studied Marketing 101 knows that
the "Better Mousetrap" concept won't work
if the "Old Mousetrap" has a significant
following, and unfortunately, IBM, Bell-labs,
NeXT and Be Corp have failed their Marketing 101.
One of the things that makes Linux popular is this:
Linux has never tried to be a "Better Version"
of _anything_ that is currently in the marketplace.
Instead, Linux is a by-product of a social/cultural phenomenon.
People contributed to the development of Linux
not because they want Linux to become a _better_
something, but they do it because they believe in
themselves.
They believe that, own their own, they can create
something that is _different_ - something that can
stand on its own, no matter what the outside world
throws at it.
It is that Spirit of Independence that attracts thousands of volunteers around
the world.
It is therefore no surprise that Linus, - and many other kernel
developers, - vehemently rejected repeated attempts to attach
the "gnu" (or any other) label to Linux.
True, Linux _DID_ borrowed many ideas from other sources, including gnu, X-Free,
*bsd, other *nixes, and yes, even from Ken Thompson's Plan-9. BUT, Linux is
much, _much_ more than the sums of all the sources combined.
Without the developers who have spent many
sleepless nights hacking away, without the
many diversified supplementary projects such
as dosemu, SAMBA and many others - some of
them rather odd -that have sprung up around
the kernel,Linux couldn't have become as
significant as it is today.
Linux may be unix "compatible", but Linux isn't Unix. Linux may have components
from FreeBSD, but it ain't *bsd either. Linux may be Motif, Posix, or any other
alphabet-soup-thingy complianced, but it ain't gonna be restricted by any of
them.
If anyone think they can "own" or even "tame"
Linux, that fella is gonna be in a biggest
surprise of his/her life.
In this ever-increasing conforming world we live in, the longer Linux can retain
its independence and keep that uncompromized, non-comforming attitude, the more
Linux will attract new talents to contribute in its development. Thus, the day
Linux achieves its world-domination is the day Linux starts its decline.
Well, I hope that day will never come.
Sincerely,
Pete
teamwork@freemail.c3.hu
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