At Thu, 6 Jan 2005 07:31:30 +0100, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > I have to admit i am lost about the actual Hurd state.
That's arguably good news. When I joined the Hurd in 1997, there was little doubt about the Hurd state at that time: It was just about at the end of dieing a slow death. So, if today the state of the Hurd looks vaguely alive, then this means that it is not totally dead. And in fact, I think it is positively alife, at a slowly growing rate. What is the reason that the Hurd is crawling, lingering at times, and not skyrocketing like other free software projects? There are many reasons. But two seem to be dominant: First, GNU/Linux is good enough for most people. Second, it is not clear that our approach is better. I think the first is evident, and doesn't need much explanation. The second point is more subtle. From what I heard on conferences etc, almost everybody buys into our vision. The goals we have are good, and useful. However, there is substantial suspicion if it is actually technically possible to deliver these goals with the design we have chosen. OTOH, it is not clear what alternatives there are. It seems people have resignated and accept the current state of the art of operating system design to be the best achievable, given the demands of the market. In other words, we are in a position where we have to provide proof against overwhelming evidence. A vision is not quite good enough. This directly translates into a lack of resources, and for the resources we have, a lack of technical guidance: We can't tell those people who want to help _how_ they can help, because we don't know. We are pioneers. We try to do something that nobody has ever done before, and we don't know if or when we can achieve what we want to do. We should not give up before trying at least. It is an ambitious project. > I know mach has > been deprecated in order to take the advantages of a (supposely) > cleaner microkernel design: L4. Some of us believe that Mach has fundamental flaws which prevent the Hurd from playing out its advantages. For some of these problems, L4 offers a solution, but L4 comes with its own set of new problems. This is why you won't find an official statement somewhere, only personal opinion pieces. > - There are some official (commonly accepted) strategy for the Hurd > development? There is an official vision. There are some proven techniques, especially at the level which is most relevant for Hurd design, which is the server interfaces. Thomas, Roland, and the others have shown that you can implement a POSIX compatible operating system with a Hurdish design. This is a powerful demonstration. Neal and me are attacking completely different problems at a completely different level. The necessary changes are deep, but they will not not be very big at the surface level, at least not conceptionally. The Hurd is a huge project, and there is substantial room for parallel development, without wasting effort. > - If so... where is such strategy documented? (Not in the Hurd > webpages, certainly). The vision is documented, and you can find out more by lurking and asking. I am sure you are very much aware of our goals. Is there a technical strategy? Not a single one, and how could that be? Nobody knows. There is substantial documentation on microkernel design, etc, but it is not readily accessible. You won't find a short paper on "truths about microkernel based multi-server design" because nobody knows with enough certainty to compile such truths. We know better what doesn't work than what does. We have ideas about what could work and what problems there are to overcome. We don't know much more than that. > But RMS has been starting to talk about the Hurd as a > "not essential" GNU package, since there is another Free kernel > (namely Linux). And he is right. The goal of the Free Software Foundation is to provide a free operating system, not to excel in operating system design. Only because we are not essential we are free to delve into unproven concepts of this scale. Insofar, I would agree that it was a mistake by the FSF to buy into unproven, cutting edge operating system design in the early 90s when the Hurd was started. If they had chosen the simpler route of writing a monolithical kernel, things would probably have worked out differently. But this is history. The GNU project did succeed anyway, independently of the Hurd, and this is a huge benefit. Now, legally and politically, the Linux kernel is not without problems, but nevertheless things have worked out remarkably well for the free software community. > The Hurd is starging being considered by the free > software community (and even the FSF) as a "curiosity" rather than a > serious project. How sadly. It's up and down. We are not worse off than a couple of years ago, quite the opposite, I believe. My impression from talking to people on conferences etc is different, by the way: A lot of interest, and respect, but also scepsis about the possibility to overcome technical challenges, which are always acknowledged. The conversation usually starts with the other person saying: "I would love to see the Hurd succeed, but [a thousand reasons why it doesn't seem to be technically possible]". Thanks, Marcus _______________________________________________ Bug-hurd mailing list Bug-hurd@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/bug-hurd
