[foul]

rminnich is a lot of things (including a 9front developer) but not a plan9 developer.

He is right however, you are also right: it's because Windows and Docker publish 9p server in a stupid way. It shouldn't be just the guest fs, you should be able to make any file server you like so hard links would be useless (as they are in plan9) because you would decide what filesystem organization layout you need.

You could make do with FUSE inside the virtualized OSes I guess.