Re: The Hurd: what is it?

[Sergio Lopez]

On Wed, Nov 09, 2005 at 09:40:04AM +0100, Alfred M. Szmidt wrote:
>    > Of course, I don't speak for Roland or Thomas.  But as far as I
>    > know, the direction of the Hurd has not changed at all.  The
>    > Hurd-on-L4 efforts are an evaluation of a new design.  Until such
>    > a design emerges as a viable alternative, there is nothing to
>    > decide.
>
>    That's the point. Until that evaluation reaches something concrete
>    and _feasible_, I don't see the need to stop Mach/Hurd development,
>    IMHO both projects can work and follow its own way.
>
> I agree partially on the first bit, but I disagree that both projects
> can work at the same time.  For the simple reason that Hurd/Mach and
> Hurd/L4 (or whatever) are two completely different systems, investing
> time in something that _will_ be ditched isn't something people want
> to do lightly.
>
> Remeber, it isn't a simple matter of migrating code from A to B.  If
> it was, then all would be so much nicer.

IMHO all the time invested in microkernel investigation (no matter if
it's on Mach/Hurd or L4/EROS/.../Hurd) is incredibly valuable, even if
it _could_ (could != will) be ditched someday.

On the other hand, you can't force people to do what they don't want to
do. If the problem is that we have very low resources for development,
the solution is to try to find more (this is what the last HurdMeeting
is all about).

-- 
Sergio Lopez
koro@sinrega.org