I really don't understand why people don't line contrib and want to put stuff in /opt or $home/bin.
That's a false dichotiomy. I quite like replica/contrib, but I also think there's some value to /opt packages. They answer two different questions.
Plan9 is susposed to be all about understanding the problems in traditional OSs and comming up with new and innovative solutions to them.
Agreed. That doesn't, of course, mean that all our answers will end up being different.
I like the idea of having non-base stuff installed somewhere other than / because it reduces the risk of getting exclusions wrong when updating, allows easier comparisons between local and vendor packages, reduces package interaction risks, allows easier interrogation of which packages are locally installed, and allows (easier) finer- grained control over which packages are "active" by default versus simply provided locally as options.
This has all gotten a bit theoretical. Like I said, a few of us have been playing with this in inferno, and I expect to try the same thing in Plan 9 soon. I'll report any interesting findings.
