Re: The Hurd: what is it?

[Thomas Bushnell BSG]

"Alfred M\. Szmidt" <ams@gnu.org> writes:

> I hate competition.  It will only hurt, and the gain will be minimal
> compared to the parties working hand in hand.  What you are asking for
> is a split, something that I atleast do not want to see.

Um, I'm not asking for anything.

I think that some really productive work would be anything that
reduces the Mach-dependence of the existing code base.  Abstracting
away Mach-specific elements would be a really really good thing,
valuable work whatever happens, that anyone could start on right now.

> The maintainers should know, and should care enough to make such a
> decision.  Otherwise what is the job of a maintainer?

Knowing things takes time and is hard.  It requires a lot of thinking
and careful evaluation of alternatives.  Marcus has delineated some of
the important issues concerned.  Working through those things takes
time, and the more heads doing so, the better.  Some of this work
requires concrete hacking.  Stamping feet and insisting on a
prognostication of how that goes is not productive.