<operating system> (Named after the classically bad, exceptionally low-budget SF film "Plan 9 from Outer Space") An operating system developed at Bell Labs by many researchers previously intimately involved with Unix. Plan 9 is superficially Unix-like but features far finer control over the name-space (on a per-process basis) and is inherently distributed and scalable. Plan 9 is divided according to service functions. CPU servers concentrate computing power into large multiprocessors; file servers provide repositories for storage and terminals give each user of the system a dedicated computer with bitmap screen and mouse on which to run a window system. The sharing of computing and file storage services provides a sense of community for a group of programmers, amortises costs and centralises and hence simplifies management and administration. The pieces communicate by a single protocol, built above a reliable data transport layer offered by an appropriate network, that defines each service as a rooted tree of files. Even for services not usually considered as files, the unified design permits some simplification. Each process has a local file name space that contains attachments to all services the process is using and thereby to the files in those services. One of the most important jobs of a terminal is to support its user's customised view of the entire system as represented by the services visible in the name space. http://plan9.bell-labs.com/plan9dist/. (2005-02-15)

The 9–9–9 Plan was a tax proposal that was a centerpiece of Herman Cain's 2012 campaign for the Republican Party's nomination for president of the United States. It was introduced in August 2011.

Plan 9 from Outer Space is a point and click adventure game adaptation of the film of the same name. It was developed at the Irish office of Gremlin Graphics for the Amiga and Atari ST, and was released in 1992.