"Unlike the sci-fi dud of the same name, this star vehicle is back! On June 7th, Bell Labs released its
Third Edition of Plan 9, an Operating System based on network computing principles, while
running on inexpensive PCs. The project started in the late 1980's, when mainframe and centralized computing systems were becoming outdated
by personal computers, or PCs. Plan 9 was started "as an attempt to have it both ways: to build a system that was centrally administered and
cost-effective using cheap modern microcomputers as its computing elements." In essence, Plan 9 is very similar to the Distributed Computing
concept of sharing processor power and resources; but instead of generic computing tasks, each system has a different computing role...."
"The third release of the Plan 9 operating system from Bell Labs is something of a snapshot of the current system. This differs from the previous,
1995 release, which was a more coordinated, well-defined release of an already-out-of-date system. Also, the previous releases were distributed
on fixed media, while this release is being done over the web. The other major difference is that the third release is licensed under an open source
agreement, which we hope will encourage people to experiment with it."
"Plan 9 is distributed under the Plan 9 License, which is basically an Open Source license. It states that Plan 9 is distributed to the licensee with the
right to "use, reproduce, modify, execute, display, perform, distribute and sublicense, the Original Software (with or without Modifications) in
Source Code form and/or Object Code form for commercial and/or non-commercial purposes." This allows you to modify the source code and
redistribute your own versions, in addition to having many of the other benefits of Open Source. The Plan 9 License is very similar to the LGPL, or
the Lesser General Public License, in that it does not require free distribution of the product."
