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I always felt that GNU continued Hurd development out of spite that no one would call Linux GNU/Linux.

• rbanffy 16y ago
  No. It continued because Hurd is very elegant and, for some people, this matters a lot. I'd love to run GNU/Hurd as my main OS, but, right now, that's not feasible. Right now, you can reasonably choose between a Unix workalike that's GPL'ed, a BSD-flavour of Unix that's BSD'ed, the bastard child of VMS and a very elegant OS that's only sold bundled with fairly ordinary x86 PCs inside very elegant exteriors.
  • mahmud 16y ago
    that "very elegant OS" is actually itself the bastard child of BSD Unix and Mach, dipped in unicorn giggles and butterfly kisses.
    • SwellJoe 16y ago
      I didn't know unicorns were involved. Count me in!
    • rbanffy 16y ago
      Having a Unix layer on top of Mach is very convenient from an application development point of view. This made the Unix userland able to run on the NeXT's OS we currently call OSX. I am not sure about the relationship between NeXT's OS and OSF/1, but OSF/1 shared the BSD-on-Mach nature with it.
• contextfree 16y ago
  My understanding is that Richard Stallman hasn't been significantly involved with the Hurd project for a very long time - it's being driven by the developers, who are motivated by their passion for the design goals of the project. Basically, as soon as Linux existed and creating a kernel ceased to be an immediate need for the GNU project, the Hurd stopped being an "industrial" project and became a research project. The small team of developers that remains is trying to make a fundamental technical advance in operating systems; that's always fraught with uncertainty, and there's nothing wrong with that.