Re: Hurd/L4 as a class project

[Doug Jones]

> I would infact want to continue this thread so that it can die the
> painful death it deserves.  You didn't answer the question that I
> considered the most important:
>
> ,----
> |    The Hurd is simply not the most accessible of projects.
> | 
> | The Hurd is accessible just like any other Free Software project
> | IMHO.  You find something that you dislike, fix it, send a patch.
> | Could you explain why you consider this different for the Hurd?
> `----


Okay, I'll answer it.

It's relatively inaccessible _to me_.  I do understand enough about the 
Hurd to see the value of the thing, but gazing at its internals makes my 
head hurt.  There are lots of projects that interest me, but most of the 
others don't do that to my head.  I am not in your league at all!

That's why I would prefer not to continue this branch of the thread; 
this is a primary channel used by core developers, and I'm not sure that 
discussing things like this with people like me is a particularly 
constructive activity.  I only de-lurked briefly to inject a few 
(possibly useless) opinions into the mix, intending to return to the 
vast silent herd of gawkers, for a while at least.

If there were another channel where "users" could hang out, I would be 
there instead of here.  That's part of the reason for bringing this up 
in the first place.  It seems in any project of sufficient maturity, 
there eventually comes a time when it becomes necessary to set up a 
separate list, so the thundering herd doesn't choke off communications 
between the core developers.  If somebody made a live-CD, it would end 
up on Slashdot, a gazillion people would BitTorrent it, and then there 
would have to be a separate list for people like me, a list for "live-CD 
users".  Most of those people would eventually lose interest and go 
away, but you might be left with a moderately large pool of semi-skilled 
people willing to do testing and look at docs.  Yes, there are good 
things and bad things about this, but something like this is bound to 
happen someday...

Can we stop now?