> How does this change things literally, conceptually and > philosophically?
If I can have plan9 as my daily desktop machine I'll be using a lot more of it, which means there'll be a few things that will annoy me and a few things that I can fix. I'll be able to dedicate more of my 'free time' towards plan9 and maybe write more programs for it, especially with an easier-to-write language like Go available. With more code written in plan9 I'd have more reason to have a server or two running it in the data centre, which may enable me to share some resources with other people running plan9. All of the above isn't wishful thinking, it actually happened several times in the past decade at different locations. plan9.ucalgary.ca was a great place to share resources for canadians and at one point ran the biggest plan9 cpu server (8-single-core cpus in 2003). Lots of people had free accounts on it to "try out stuff". Elsewhere, a server in Japan had amassed the largest collection of 9fans, similarly, other 9grid machines popped up in many places in Europe and the US. Unfortunately there are never enough people sticking with plan9 long enough. Eventually i couldn't stick with it either. I stopped actively coding for plan9 when it stopped being my default desktop in 2006-7. Now if I need something done in Plan9 there are quite a few capable replacements like 9vx and p9p, but I would go back to running native plan9 if I could because it's a much calmer place to work. Ironically, I wish to go back to plan9 because the internet is too distracting, yet I can't do it because there's no proper web browser for it :) cheers: andrey
