I don't think that that engineers who built Kubernetes were looking at Plan9 and saying "ok guys, it's too easy to do things, we must make it harder so people are aware of the network".
I think the more believable scenario is "hey let's see what we can do with the existing Linux systems and sockets and stuff" and then importing the network into the model because it was the simplest solution.
Then again, whether or not should applications be network-transparent-by-default is a discussion for itself. I believe they should. Every program (that does not drive hardware directly) is just a piece of code that glues various OS APIs together. In the case of Plan9, the APIs are the filesystem, and the filesystem can be modified with 9P protocol. If we can use the same local program to perform an operation on a remote machine without any modification, why the hell shouldn't we.
I think the more believable scenario is "hey let's see what we can do with the existing Linux systems and sockets and stuff" and then importing the network into the model because it was the simplest solution.
Then again, whether or not should applications be network-transparent-by-default is a discussion for itself. I believe they should. Every program (that does not drive hardware directly) is just a piece of code that glues various OS APIs together. In the case of Plan9, the APIs are the filesystem, and the filesystem can be modified with 9P protocol. If we can use the same local program to perform an operation on a remote machine without any modification, why the hell shouldn't we.