Re: about GNU Hurd

[olafBuddenhagen]

Hi,

On Wed, Sep 05, 2007 at 05:47:56PM +0200, Wolfgang Jährling wrote:

> > And as Olaf pointed out, nobody, not even Marcus, knows what Hurd-NG
> > will look like, there is no goal, not even an idea behind it.
> 
> I don't think this is true.  The documents I found here[0] and here[1]
> gave me a lot of information about the direction of Hurd-NG.
> 
> [0] http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/l4-hurd/2007-01/msg00007.html
> [1] http://www.bddebian.com/~wiki/hurd/ng/philosophy/

Unfortunately, these documents no longer describe the current
direction... Especially the wiki. (The position paper is somewhat
newer.)

The wiki piece was created at the time when ngHurd on Coyotos was
considered the way forward by some (not me) -- but this is no longer the
case. I wonder whether this part of the wiki wouldn't be better
discarded alltogether; at this point it is pretty misleading I think.

In the meantime, Marcus admitted that he got carried away with Coyotos.
He realized that the changes necessary to the Coyotos design to match
Hurd goals would be much bigger than he originally hoped; and that it
must be so, as not only specific goals of Coyotos are different, but in
fact the whole mindeset behind the system is a totally different one
from GNU and the Hurd.

He also realized that while security is important, the kind of security
offered by Coyotos goes much beyond what the Hurd really needs. And last
but not least, he realized that Coyotos doesn't really solve many of the
existing problems either.

The immediate result is that the original ngHurd plans based on Coyotos,
as described in the wiki, are no longer pursued. However, there are
other results as well. Besides of the more or less technical conclusions
described above, Marcus also learned some other things in the process:
For one, he seems to have realised now that it's not really possible to
come up with a perfect design by brooding long enough and then just
implementing that... So he changed his strategy: Now he works on a
prototype to test his current ideas (which are mostly based on Coyotos
and seL4 I understand), consciously postponing the other open design
questions, not trying to build a complete new Hurd at once.

Another thing he seems to have understood is that it's not a good idea
to go public with untested or even unfinished designs, claiming they are
better than the existing one. Rather, he tries to test his new ideas
himself first. Which is why you hear little about his present work. And
this is a good thing. This whole discussion shows that the way he used
to push his ideas turned out disasterous for the Hurd community, leaving
people interested in the Hurd pretty much in the void...

-antrik-