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Re: [Fwd: interview in french GNU magazine]

After looking through my Gnus archive group, I found this message,
which was the interview Denis Bodor conducted.  I figured I'd forward
it to this list, so that people interested in the article don't suffer
from the translation-of-a-translation phenomenon.

-- 
 Gordon Matzigkeit <gord@fig.org>  //\ I'm a FIG (http://www.fig.org/)
Committed to freedom and diversity \// I use GNU (http://www.gnu.org/)
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[Sorry for such a long delay.]

>>>>> Denis bodor writes:

 Db> - How many people work on the Hurd ?

Currently, there are five actively involved hackers: Marcus Brinkmann
does nearly all the Debian work of porting packages and system
integration, OKUJI Yoshinori works on GRUB and GNU Mach, Mark Kettenis
is working on the GNU C Library, Roland McGrath and Thomas Bushnell
work as a team to fix difficult bugs and add new features to complex
parts of the Hurd and C Library.

Outside of that core, there are probably about 30 people who have
posted on the Hurd lists, and are trying to get involved with it.
We're lacking in documentation right now, and so it is difficult for
people just to jump in.

My official role is to run around and find jobs that are being
neglected, then either help volunteers take over them, or try to do
them myself.  I'm mostly a coordinator.

 Db> - The version of the hurd gonna be 0.3, but is it still quite
 Db> stable. Is there a lot of work to go to 1.0 ?

We need a lot more packages to be ported, more documentation, and a
simpler installation process before 1.0.  Each new package helps us
uncover new bugs, and to improve the system.

 Db> - Some people said that the Hurd can run Object Oriented programs
 Db> (like Gnome, Gnustep,...) faster. Is it true, Why ?

The microkernel that the Hurd is based on (currently GNU Mach) is
designed for message passing.  It is possible to make changes to the
message implementation in GNOME or GNUSTEP so that they work more
efficiently under Mach.

 Db> - do you think that the best way to make the Hurd popular is to
 Db> make it run directly GNU/linux binaries ? what the hurd need to
 Db> do that ?

GNU/Linux binary compatibility will be useful, but there are other,
more important changes and features that we should probably add
first.

The simplest form of binary compatibility would be to emulate glibc's
Linux interface on the Hurd.  This should not be difficult, since
glibc can already run on both the Hurd and Linux.  Then, most
dynamically linked applications would be able to run on the Hurd.
There are other problems, such as dependence on the Linux /proc
filesystem, but hopefully not too many binaries require those
functions.

 Db> - Is there one developpment team by country ? Here in france,
 Db> there is no specifique project related to the Hurd, so it's
 Db> perhaps a good ID to make a call in this paper.

We're an international team, and welcome anybody who wants to get more
involved in working on the Hurd.  We always need more people who are
talented C programmers, and understand kernel implementation, RPC, and
thread programming.

People who want to write documentation are especially welcome, since
they help other people to understand the architecture, and become
kernel hackers.

 Db> - Have you something more to say to incitate our readers to try
 Db> and play with the hurd ?

The more people who use the Hurd, the faster it will become a stable
system.  It is a good system to learn how to hack kernels, because so
much of the implementation is exposed, and available for you to
modify.

-- 
 Gordon Matzigkeit <gord@fig.org>  //\ I'm a FIG (http://www.fig.org/)
Committed to freedom and diversity \// I use GNU (http://www.gnu.org/)

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