For one, recall that the HURD project was started before Linux. At the time, there was no free Unix-like kernel they could work on; the rest of GNU had been dev

For one, recall that the HURD project was started before Linux. At the time, there was no free Unix-like kernel they could work on; the rest of GNU had been developed on proprietary kernels. > I feel like all the years of dev work on HURD could have been better spent on other projects, but it's not my time :( I don't really think it's nearly as many developer years as you think. HURD isn't that big a project; it's a few people, working on what they want to work on. Most of the actual development effort goes into the Linux kernel. There's room for more than one free kernel out there. Heck, there's room for a lot. There are still people using and developing FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, DragonflyBSD, Darwin, Haiku, ReactOS, and more.