Indeed, few of the patches at <http://patch-tracker.debian.org/package/hurd/1:0.5.git20140326-1> look Debian-specific.
For features that are not “fully baked” yet, like DDE, wouldn’t it make sense to have a branch in the Hurd repo, instead of a set of patches in Debian? As for patches for which review “never completed”, there should really be a timeout IMO, and the patch should be either rejected for everyone (including Debian), or accepted, or amended. My 2¢, Ludo’.
