Re: Future Direction of GNU Hurd?

[Dr. Arne Babenhauserheide]

Jonathan S. Shapiro <jonathan.s.shapiro@gmail.com> writes:

> The fundamental problem with the Hurd is the same as it has always been: it
> is a solution looking for a problem. Hurd advocates have not been able to
> clearly articulate what problem is being solved and why it is a problem
> that users should care about or be concerned about. This has been the state
> of the Hurd *for 30 years*.

This is false.

I wrote clearly in 2011 where the Hurd solves real problems:
http://www.draketo.de/light/english/free-software/some-technical-advantages-of-the-hurd

And nowadays SystemD proved that the features that the Hurd makes easy
are so compelling that they make it possible to get distributions to
sign on to constraints that would have been an absolute no-go before.

Reading that I expect your next question to be: "Why doesn’t it get
adoption then?"

The short of it:
- USB
- Audio

For Audio I hope to be able to build a sound-translator that allows
starting programs without sound access and when the program tries to
access the sound device popping up a desktop notification and/or sending
wall note that asks the user to allow access.

That’s what the browsers do, but on an OS level. You no longer need to
either trust applications not to send your microphone stream to a remote
server at any time or create dedicated users and start programs either
trusted or untrusted, and different from Windows you actually get
notifications when something tries to access audio (instead of silently
failing to work).

> I am reluctant to say something so discouraging, but when a project
> has not moved forward substantially in 30 years

This is false, too.

I used to write the Month of the Hurd before 2013 when I refocussed my
contributions on the Freenet Project to combat pervasive surveillance,
and I saw substantial steps forward every month. And this kept going.
We’re talking about a kernel, so steps might not be graphical, but it
moves.

A short story: When I was at FOSDEM a few years ago and Samuel held a
talk about the Hurd, I saw the looks of people who thought "Oh, Hurd
again didn’t move". So I asked a question: "What changed in the past 3
years?"

What followed by Samuel was a brief excerpt of huge improvements, one of
which was "you can now use subhurds without root access" which means
that in the Hurd there was no more need for anything dockerlike.

I don’t think that many people kept the feeling that Hurd isn’t moving
after getting the answer.

I can’t really blame you for thinking that the Hurd didn’t move, because
we don’t really communicate that well, and partly I’m to blame for that
because I don’t find the time in recent years to write updates. But the
Hurd is moving substantially.

If you’re still not convinced, please have a look at the News of the
Hurd up to 2013: https://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/news.html
That’s when I was still writing news entries.

Best wishes,
Arne
-- 
Unpolitisch sein
heißt politisch sein
ohne es zu merken

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