Re: design goals vs mechanisms (was: Re: Let's do some coding :-)

[Alfred M\. Szmidt]

   Do the GNU tools run at the native Mach layer?  No, they don't.

Does anything run on the native layer of a kernel?  Don't think so.
So the comparison is silly.

   Furthermore, Alfred conceeded that POSIX should not be fully
   implemented, and he even suggested to sandbox applications in
   sub-hurds,

I suggested it as a secure chroot() on GNU/Hurd, not as a general
cheap mechanism for sandboxing things.

   which just means that he wants to add more layers (it doesn't
   matter if the different layers provide the same API or not).

It doesn't add a new layer, it uses a existing on.  The is a small but
crucial difference.

   * GNU is written for POSIX, and thus POSIX should be first class.

   Response: Not very conclusive, due to lack of precedence on Mach.

It is very conclusive, no system uses the kernel directly.  POSIX is a
application layer for writting portable programs, not a kernel
specification.

   Furthermore, doesn't really explain why GNU/Linux is not
   sufficient.

Because the goal of the GNU project is to create the GNU system, which
doesn't use Linux as its kernel.