GNU Hurd port

[Shentino]

Just observing that ubuntu itself is a downstream of debian's unstable
branch.

So in a way we already are on the "cutting edge" as it were, so it would
seem.

On Wed, Dec 9, 2009 at 10:38 AM, John Moser <john.r.moser at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Wed, Dec 9, 2009 at 11:17 AM, Patrick Goetz <pgoetz at mail.utexas.edu>
> wrote:
> >> Subject: Re: Supporting a GNU Hurd port?
> >> From: Scott James Remnant <scott at ubuntu.com>
> >> Date: Tue, 08 Dec 2009 17:14:38 +0000
> >> To: Danny Piccirillo <danny.piccirillo at ubuntu.com>
> >>
> >>
> >> Speaking as the guy who maintains the boot and plumbing layer, I am
> >> completely and utterly uninterested in such a port.
> >>
> >
> > My question is why are we even talking about this?  The linux kernel is
> > by far the most robust, dynamic part of the whole distribution, and it
> > should be quite clear that there aren't enough developers to maintain
> > even the software that's in the distro now.
>
> I'm the guy that thought street lamps run on burning gas was a
> perfectly workable idea, but using some sort of glowing electric wire
> without fire would be even better.
>
> Would you have rather kept your indoor lighting as kerosene torches on
> the wall?  At the very least you'd be warmer in the winter....
>
> A Ford Shelby V8 still has a live axle in the back.  It works, but an
> independent rear suspension engineered properly (the one in the Cobra
> 03/04 was crap, the LSD was done wrong, and it got horrible wheel hop;
> it was basically a FWD non-diff suspension for a 200ftlb car shoved
> into a RWD car with a rear diff getting 400ftlb torque) would be much,
> much better and the car would be able to corner VERY hard without
> flipping or skidding sideways.
>
> At some point, all of these things were non-obvious; at some other,
> more recent point, they were considered "interesting, but not
> important."  These days, we're sitting around laughing at Ford because
> the Mustang has LOL LIVE AXLE 1920 SUSPENSION....
>
> Right now, a microkernel is still between "non-obvious" and
> "interesting, but not important;" we haven't quite determined if there
> is a real benefit, we'll argue over if there is or isn't, and most
> people who decide there is a significant benefit declare that it's
> simply not significant enough to matter even though they've never seen
> it put into full practice.
>
> We could be "innovative" or "technological leaders," but that puts us
> all at risk of "doing something stupid and having it not work out
> quite right."  It's more palatable for most people to just sit back,
> wait for someone else to do it, and then either watch it collapse or
> play catch-up; who the hell wants to take risks on new technology
> themselves?  Especially if what, maybe we use HURD and find out Minix
> was much better and surpassed HURD support-wise; or we use Minix and
> find out HURD was just better in a HUGE way.  Maybe a third player
> will come up and omg, The Perfect Kernel!
>
> The core of the whole argument is, of course, that some of us see
> these things as more interesting than others.  Scott simply doesn't
> want to do more work -- trust me it's a hell of a lot of work, and
> I've already given the best way to attack it ("best" being "mitigates
> any extra work in the future"), and that's still a hell of a lot of
> work.  Others here don't trust the technology, still others are
> (mistakenly) convinced it's already been determined that the
> technology is a worthless research project with no practical benefit.
>
> And then there's the crowd that believes this is the future and we
> need to get on it RIGHT NOW and doesn't understand the concept of
> prioritization.  Our pet projects obviously deserve 100% of the
> resources, right?  Ubuntu should go to Minix right now (I am a Minix
> fan), they should implement Linux d-bus and NF_NETLINK and udev stuff
> so the boot process is drop-in, they should start porting FreeBSD
> driver code to the Minix code base, and not a damn thing else matters.
>  That makes sense, right?
>
> No?
>
> It probably doesn't make sense if you have any freaking clue about how
> a large project is run; but why should reality get in the way of your
> pet projects?
>
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