>Guess the 'bigger question' - taking just the 'symptoms' [1] - is why, >presuming the concepts (Plan9, and any/all 'sputniks') have value [2], it/they >is/are not in broader use already.
because to be useful, they need to be done at a fundamental level, there's too much inertia represented in existing things, and the emphasis for some time has been on languages, not systems, and XML and w3c, not systems. you can see that when people quite seriously say things like ``we won't even need an operating system in future, just a browser [and plug-ins]'' without realising that all they've really done is turn the browser into the operating system. which still leaves the problem of coming up with a reasonable design.
