9front is the kind of OS AT&T would have made if they didn't have those tens of thousands of outside "contributors" fixing their problems for them. Plan 9 was created by AT&T as the "successor" to UNIX, not a hobby project. Plan 9 was based directly on existing UNIX source code, not written from scratch. From 1991 to now, they couldn't turn that code into something that doesn't suck. Even people making operating systems for free in their spare time did better. That's because of how extremely unproductive C is and how badly designed the UNIX "tools" and "interface" are. C is also inefficient unless you have multi-million line compilers made by hundreds of people over decades.
Before C and UNIX became popular, computer companies and researchers could make several computer architectures, compilers, and OSes themselves. In this new world of C and UNIX, everything needs thousands of programmers to produce inferior quality software than what could be done in the 70s and we are plagued by bugs from 40 years ago that didn't exist in the 70s outside of AT&T's PDP-11s, and it sucks.
Date: Tue, 19 Nov 91 13:53:22 EST
Subject: Once Again, Weenix Unies Reinvent History
Date: Tue, 19 Nov 91 08:27:49 EST
From: DH
Yesterday Rob Pike from Bell Labs gave a talk on the
latest and greatest successor to unix, called Plan 9.
Basically he described ITS's mechanism for using file
channels to control resources as if it were the greatest
new idea since the wheel.
Amazing, wasn't it? They've even reinvented the JOB device.
In another couple of years I expect they will discover the
need for PCLSRing (there were already hints of this in his
talk yesterday).
I suppose we could try explaining this to them now, but
they'll only look at us cross-eyed and sputter something
about how complex and inelegant that would be. And then
we'd really lose it when they come back and tell us how they
invented this really simple and elegant new thing...