Re: Hurd Projects

[Marcus Brinkmann]

On Sat, Dec 22, 2001 at 01:47:57PM -0700, mike burrell wrote:
> i know that the Hurd (or most of its developers) is more design-focused than
> implementation-focused, and a clean break between cacheing and networking
> would be the best design to use, but i'm maybe a bit impatient.

Well, this is probably true, but the Hurd is also a liberal system in that
it does allow you to work on such features as you are discussing seperately
from the development of the Hurd itself.  Only where you need to get changes
in (for example) the Hurd libraries themselve in, it becomes a matter of the
official Hurd sources and how they are maintained.

This is unlike the Linux kernel, where you only have hope of widespread
usage of your code if it is included in the official kernel.  What you gain
in the Hurd is the freedom of the user (to extend and develop the system as
he sees it).  Or in other words: we might be conservative with the Hurd
sources when it comes to features and other patches, but this should not
stop you from being creative, innovative, impatient and wild in Hurd based
software if that's what gives you a thrill :) [1]

One important note:  You talked about turning something into a translator. 
This is usually done by linking it with the Hurd libraries, which are
GPL'ed.  So please make sure you look out for GPL compatibly licensed
software if you want to integrate it in a translator based solution.

Happy hacking!
Marcus

[1] Of course, we still are interested in merging useful programs into the
Hurd source.  But it can work out either way without harming anyone.

-- 
`Rhubarb is no Egyptian god.' Debian http://www.debian.org brinkmd@debian.org
Marcus Brinkmann              GNU    http://www.gnu.org    marcus@gnu.org
Marcus.Brinkmann@ruhr-uni-bochum.de
http://www.marcus-brinkmann.de