There is likely some history there. Plan 9 is the only OS I know of that bakes in all of the documentation and there is a heavily ingrained culture of 'RTFM!' in the community.

The interesting part is the two references to a person who has long since passed, Uriel. The make file and configure files both print "read the README file." I am sure he complained that most people would blindly unpack the source and immediately run make or configure without ever reading anything. It could be a way to force people to RTFM. But that is just my opinion. If you really want an answer, drop an email to the 9fans mailing list and ask. It's still active.

Pretty common in all UNIXes, which is why projects like GNU and Linux even had a starting point what to compare themselves to.

IBM systems have the famous Red Books, but ok it isn't included.

Windows before the Internet days, when the SDK came in CD, having a MSDN subscription meant receiving a box with all documentation from Microsoft.

Inferno as Plan 9's successor also included all documentation.

Niklaus Wirth OSes for Modula-2 and Oberon, had the OS documentation as hypertext.

All Xerox PARC OSes, across Smalltalk, Interlisp-D and Mesa/Cedar had online help with the system documentation.

It's plan9. It is supposed to be at once weird and somewhat fitting.

I don't think an INSTALL script with that name is common among Plan 9 software.

Also, this project is designed for operating systems other than Plan 9.

* plan9 PORT sigh the clue is in the name

Yes, it's a plan9 port; why would you expect it to change any more than is absolutely needed to get it running on the new host OS?

Yes, not plan9.

I despair at your (and GGP) lack of comprehension

I don't think it's a lack of comprehension, so much as that we disagree what a "port" means.

I was correcting the user's "plan9" comment.

It's a port of a collection of plan 9 userspace to a non-9 operating system.

Perhaps you've now learnt something

GG