Plan 9 from Bell Labs

Plan 9 from Bell Labs
Glenda, the Plan 9 mascot in a space suit, drawn by Renée French[1][2]
rio, default user interface of Plan 9 from Bell Labs
DeveloperPlan 9 Foundation, succeeding Bell Labs
Written inDialect of ANSI C
Working stateCurrent[3][4]
Source modelOpen source
Initial release1992; 32 years ago (1992) (universities) / 1995; 29 years ago (1995) (general public)
Final releaseFourth Edition / January 10, 2015; 9 years ago (2015-01-10)[5]
Repository9p.io/sources/plan9/sys[6]
Marketing targetOperating systems research, networked environments, general-purpose use
Available inEnglish
Platformsx86 / Vx32, x86-64, MIPS, DEC Alpha, SPARC, PowerPC, ARM
Kernel typeMonolithic[7]
Influenced byResearch Unix, Cambridge Distributed Computing System[8]
Default
user interface		rio / rc
License2021: MIT[9][10]
2014: GPL-2.0-only[11]
2002: LPL-1.02[12]
2000: Plan 9 OSL[13][14][15][16]
Succeeded byInferno
Other derivatives and forks
Official websitep9f.org

Plan 9 from Bell Labs is a distributed operating system which originated from the Computing Science Research Center (CSRC) at Bell Labs in the mid-1980s and built on UNIX concepts first developed there in the late 1960s. Since 2000, Plan 9 has been free and open-source. The final official release was in early 2015.

Under Plan 9, UNIX's everything is a file metaphor is extended via a pervasive network-centric filesystem, and the cursor-addressed, terminal-based I/O at the heart of UNIX-like operating systems is replaced by a windowing system and graphical user interface without cursor addressing, although rc, the Plan 9 shell, is text-based.

The name Plan 9 from Bell Labs is a reference to the Ed Wood 1957 cult science fiction Z-movie Plan 9 from Outer Space.[17] The system continues to be used and developed by operating system researchers and hobbyists.[18][19]

  1. ^ "Plan 9 from Bell Labs".
  2. ^ Lucent Technologies (2006). "Glenda, the Plan 9 Bunny". Retrieved 2008-12-02.
  3. ^ "Plan 9 Foundation: Activities". plan9foundation.org. Retrieved 23 March 2021.
  4. ^ "9legacy". 9legacy.org. Retrieved 23 March 2021.
  5. ^ "plan9checksums". Bell Labs. Archived from the original on 2017-06-01. Retrieved 2019-07-25. Sat Jan 10 04:04:55 EST 2015 ... plan9.iso.bz2
  6. ^ "GPLv2 source code".
  7. ^ Crawford, Diane (1999). "Forum". Communications of the ACM. 42 (8). Association for Computing Machinery (ACM): 11–15. doi:10.1145/310930.310939. ISSN 0001-0782. S2CID 263897745.
  8. ^ Cite error: The named reference design-paper was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  9. ^ "Plan 9 License". p9f.org. Archived from the original on 14 June 2021. Retrieved 14 June 2021.
  10. ^ "Plan9License". akaros.cs.berkeley.edu. Archived from the original on 13 February 2014. Retrieved 14 June 2021. The University of California, Berkeley, has been authorised by Alcatel-Lucent to release all Plan 9 software previously governed by the Lucent Public License, Version 1.02 under the GNU General Public License, Version 2.
  11. ^ "Lucent Public License Version 1.02". plan9.bell-labs.com. Archived from the original on 3 October 2003. Retrieved 14 June 2021.
  12. ^ "Plan 9 Open Source License - Version 1.4 - 09/10/02". plan9.bell-labs.com. Archived from the original on 18 December 2002. Retrieved 14 June 2021.
  13. ^ "Plan 9 Open Source License - Version 1.2 - 10/29/00". plan9.bell-labs.com. Archived from the original on 6 December 2000. Retrieved 14 June 2021.
  14. ^ "Plan 9 Open Source License - Version 1.1 - 09/20/00". plan9.bell-labs.com. Archived from the original on 26 October 2000. Retrieved 14 June 2021.
  15. ^ "Plan 9 Open Source License Agreement". plan9.bell-labs.com. Archived from the original on 16 August 2000. Retrieved 14 June 2021.
  16. ^ Cite error: The named reference taoup was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  17. ^ Cite error: The named reference 9front-announcement was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  18. ^ Cite error: The named reference 9atom-home was invoked but never defined (see the help page).