Bell Labs Announces Open-Source Release Of Plan 9 Operating System.

Business & Technology Editors

MURRAY HILL, N.J.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 7, 2000

Bell Labs, the research and development arm of Lucent Technologies (NYSE:LU), has made the third release of its Plan 9(TM) computer operating system available on the World Wide Web under an open-source agreement. Anyone interested in using Plan 9 may download the system, including source code and documentation, from http://plan9.bell-labs.com/plan9dist/.

Developed by the research center that created the Unix* system and the C and C++ programming languages, Plan 9 was the first operating system designed from the outset for production-quality distributed computing in a networked environment. From its inception in the late 1980s, the system has demonstrated the power of a few radical ideas, broadly applied:

-- making communication the central function of the computing

system

-- naming and accessing all system resources as if they were

files

-- allowing multiple views of the distributed system to be

defined as "name spaces," private hierarchies of named

resources that are visible and accessible to a particular

user, device, or process.

Plan 9 has been updated and improved in the five years since its second release; the underlying approach, however, remains the same.

Plan 9 uses a single protocol to refer to and communicate with processes, programs, and data, including aspects of both the user interface and the network. In this way the system provides a uniform means of access to diverse computing resources, which may be distributed across a network of servers, terminals, and other devices. A user could easily engage a number of different programs running on geographically dispersed computers in a single session -- including hardware and software that might be considered practically incompatible -- without needing to know or care about the details.

In a typical implementation -- as part of the infrastructure for a work group -- Plan 9 allows each user to customize a virtually private computing environment and then recreate it at any networked terminal, anywhere. The system does this by delivering a private view of shared resources, including processing power, data, programs, and communication services. A more prosaic use is to simplify system administration for a community of users who may or may not know that Plan 9 is providing their connections to printers, servers, and other resources. Plan 9 also could be used to operate special-purpose devices such as personal firewalls for secure access to university networks, corporate intranets, or the public Internet.

Among the changes in this release of Plan 9 are a revised kernel, which now has the means to resolve ambiguous file names; an improved graphics environment; an updated command set; and expanded libraries. The system's creators also have installed "plumbing," a new mechanism for passing messages between interactive programs, as part of the user interface.

Another change in this release was inspired by a recent development outside the lab -- the industry's increasing acceptance of open-source distribution for software such as operating systems and browsers.

"A lot of the ideas in Plan 9 are public currency now," said Rob Pike, director of Computing Concepts Research at Bell Labs, who led work on the third release of Plan 9. "We decided that the actual software should be public currency too. The open-source agreement allows free, source-level access to the Plan 9 software and should encourage more people to experiment with it."

Like other open-source software, the new release of Plan 9 can also be distributed and supported by third-party software vendors. The first company to announce its intention to distribute Plan 9 is Vita Nuova, a network operating systems software provider based in York, England. "In addition to distributing the software as a full boxed set with CDs and manuals, we intend to provide bug fixes, enhancements, and e-mail support complementing the efforts of others within the Plan 9 community," said Michael Jeffrey, CEO of Vita Nuova (www.vitanuova.com).

Rob Pike will deliver two talks on Plan 9 -- as well as a third on quantum computation and communication -- during the technical sessions of the Usenix 2000 Annual Technical Conference in San Diego, June 21 through 23.

Lucent Technologies, headquartered in Murray Hill, N.J., USA, designs and delivers the systems, software, silicon and services for next-generation communications networks for service providers and enterprises. Backed by the research and development of Bell Labs, Lucent focuses on high-growth areas such as optical and wireless networks; Internet infrastructure; communications software; communications semiconductors and optoelectronics; Web-based enterprise solutions that link private and public networks; and professional network design and consulting services. For more information, visit www.lucent.com and www.bell-labs.com.

Plan 9 is a trademark of Lucent Technologies.

* Unix is a registered trademark of The Open Group.