Re: [dwm] The StumpWM Experience

On Tue, Oct 09, 2007 at 11:02:29PM -0400, Manny Calavera wrote:
> "Plan 9 failed simply because it fell short of being a compelling enough
> improvement on Unix to displace its ancestor. Compared to Plan 9, Unix
> creaks and clanks and has obvious rust spots, but it gets the job done
> well enough to hold its position. There is a lesson here for ambitious
> system architects: the most dangerous enemy of a better solution is an
> existing codebase that is just good enough."

I think Plan 9 hasn't been a success because the Bell Labs made
it available under an Open Source license too late. If they'd
released it earlier there would have been chances of earlier
adaption in todays OS designs. A key to Unix' success was that
it has been available (in form of BSD and Linux) to students for
nearly the last two decades, which can't be said of Plan 9.

If Plan 9 would have been made production ready by Lucent or
like commercial Unices, it might have reached a market share
like HP-UX or something similiar today. But that wasn't the
case.

I don't believe it failed because Unix was just good enough.
Hell, why did OS X or Windows succeeded then? They are much worse
than Unix.

Regards,

-- 
 Anselm R. Garbe >< http://www.suckless.org/ >< GPG key: 0D73F361