From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.2 (2018-09-13) on inbox.vuxu.org X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-0.8 required=5.0 tests=HEADER_FROM_DIFFERENT_DOMAINS, MAILING_LIST_MULTI,RCVD_IN_DNSWL_NONE autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.2 Received: from minnie.tuhs.org (minnie.tuhs.org [45.79.103.53]) by inbox.vuxu.org (OpenSMTPD) with ESMTP id feb2166a for ; Wed, 28 Aug 2019 23:20:16 +0000 (UTC) Received: by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix, from userid 112) id 987489BFD2; Thu, 29 Aug 2019 09:20:15 +1000 (AEST) Received: from minnie.tuhs.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id BF2EE9BDBB; Thu, 29 Aug 2019 09:19:59 +1000 (AEST) Received: by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix, from userid 112) id 456559BDBB; Thu, 29 Aug 2019 09:19:58 +1000 (AEST) Received: from outgoing.mit.edu (outgoing-auth-1.mit.edu [18.9.28.11]) by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 73D999BD79 for ; Thu, 29 Aug 2019 09:19:57 +1000 (AEST) Received: from callcc.thunk.org (guestnat-104-133-0-111.corp.google.com [104.133.0.111] (may be forged)) (authenticated bits=0) (User authenticated as tytso@ATHENA.MIT.EDU) by outgoing.mit.edu (8.14.7/8.12.4) with ESMTP id x7SNJrli019409 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=DHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384 bits=256 verify=NOT); Wed, 28 Aug 2019 19:19:53 -0400 Received: by callcc.thunk.org (Postfix, from userid 15806) id B8DD142049E; Wed, 28 Aug 2019 19:19:52 -0400 (EDT) Date: Wed, 28 Aug 2019 19:19:52 -0400 From: "Theodore Y. Ts'o" To: Christopher Browne Message-ID: <20190828231952.GA536@mit.edu> References: <13c5c36e-c84d-e020-d09e-51c8c502dc6d@kilonet.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit In-Reply-To: User-Agent: Mutt/1.10.1 (2018-07-13) Subject: Re: [TUHS] If not Linux, then what? X-BeenThere: tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.26 Precedence: list List-Id: The Unix Heritage Society mailing list List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Cc: TUHS main list Errors-To: tuhs-bounces@minnie.tuhs.org Sender: "TUHS" On Wed, Aug 28, 2019 at 04:07:39PM -0400, Christopher Browne wrote: > > - Hurd was imagined to be the next thing... > > To borrow from my cookie file... > > "I am aware of the benefits of a micro kernel approach. However, the > fact remains that Linux is here, and GNU isn't --- and people have > been working on Hurd for a lot longer than Linus has been working on > Linux." -- Ted T'so, 1992. That's "Ts'o" :-), and that quote wasn't my arguing that Hurd would be the next thing. It was people had been working on the Hurd for *years* (starting 1984) and it still wasn't real. If it wasn't going to be real after eight years, another eighty probably wouldn't have helped. And a lot of this was because was because RMS was hard to work with, and he was a purist. Pretty much very *definition* of the perfect should always be the enemy of the "good enough". In fact, at one point Thomas Bushnell, one of the senior Hurd developers pushed to have the Hurd switch to using BSD 4.4-Lite, and Stallman refused[1]. “RMS was a very strong believer, wrongly, I think, in a very greedy algorithm approach to code reuse issues,” Thomas Bushnell later remembered. “My first choice was to take the BSD 4.4-Lite release and make a kernel. I knew the code, I knew how to do it. It is now perfectly obvious to me that this would have succeeded splendidly and the world would be a very different place today. RMS wanted to work together with people from Berkeley on such an effort. Some of them were interested, but some seem to have been deliberately dragging their feet: and the reason now seems to be that they had the goal of spinning off BSDI. A GNU based on 4.4-Lite would undercut BSDI.” As Bushnell describes it, Stallman came to the conclusion that “Mach is a working kernel. 4.4-Lite is only partial. We will go with Mach.” [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20121228225905/http://www.linuxuser.co.uk/features/whatever-happened-to-the-hurd-the-story-of-the-gnu-os That's probably one of the other things that may have hampered BSD. The BSD license made it easier (or at least made easier business models) for monetizing BSD, and some of the most talented people went off to make a buck off of BSD. BSDI, Sun, NetApp, Wasabi Systems, etc. Nothing wrong with that of course, and if people like Bill Joy were able to make bank based on BSD, more power to them. But it probably removed from the leadership pool people who might have had better leadership, and technical architect skills who might have led one of the *BSD's to greater success. The GPL makes it harder to monetize Linux --- although, as we've seen, certainly not impossible --- and if you take a look at the most of the senior technical people at Linux, none of us have made off as well as, say, Bill Joy. I'm still a working stiff, and don't have enough to retire. (That's OK; I'm perfectly happy being part of the 99%. :-) > Anyway, Hurd *might* have been a "next thing," and I don't think the > popularity of Linux was enough to have completely taken wind out of its > sails, given that there's the dozens of "Unix homages" out there. Given who called the shots (and it wasn't the key people actually doing most of the technical work, such as Bushnell) I actually think it's not very likely Hurd could have succeeded. RMS actually tried to recruit me to work on the Hurd as well, and I refused, because of project leadership concerns. (Again, feel free to hate on Linus's management style, but there were far worse ones in the open source OS world at the time.) - Ted