It wasn't accidentally sold. It was developed as a side project. I believe Bell Labs was required by a court ruling to license it for free, which aided in the initial growth in popularity.
If I had to guess why Plan 9 stayed a research OS- well, Plan 9 was first released to universities in 1992. Linux was first released in 1991, 386BSD was launched in 1992, FreeBSD and NetBSD forked in 1993.
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It wasn't accidentally sold. It was developed as a side project. I believe Bell Labs was required by a court ruling to license it for free, which aided in the initial growth in popularity.
If I had to guess why Plan 9 stayed a research OS- well, Plan 9 was first released to universities in 1992. Linux was first released in 1991, 386BSD was launched in 1992, FreeBSD and NetBSD forked in 1993.
> Plan 9 was first released to universities in 1992
And it wasn't free.