Re: What is ``access (NULL, whatever)'' supposed to do?

[Roland McGrath]

I think tb has covered the essence here already.  tschwinge, your comments
here are really not apropos, and frankly they seem gratuitously hostile to
the basic principles that have always driven Hurd development.  I really do
appreciate your frustrations.  We've felt them for a very long time too.
But the easy way out is not the way that leads anywhere we want to wind up.

Look, everyone has things "more important to do" than working on the Hurd
at all.  What are we here for?  It's not to get a nominally working GNU
system out the door fast.  We have one of those.  We call it GNU/Linux.
Once upon a time, the Hurd was going to be done "within the 1990s, to be
sure".  We backed off on that claim a while ago, and noone goes around
saying "within the third millenium, to be sure", because, well, it might
not be done then.  If you're in a hurry and you want to make compromises to
make quicker progress, you are really in the wrong project.  If you're
frustrated about the lack of progress, then welcome to the club and get
used to it.  It's going to be too slow.  It really, really is.  I'd much
rather have everyone here pissed at me for not having rewritten threads and
signal handling in the last ten years than to have people up in arms about
not giving up on our principled incompatibility with things that are wrong
with other systems.  This is what we are about.  It's what we have always
been about.  It's what will continue to define the Hurd's mission for as
long as there are Bushnells and McGraths who can remember what a Hurd is.


Thanks,
Roland