I think the problem people face is: Why work on something that is already fundamentally obsolete or bad? Why not focus on the reimplementation you know has to come?
And because questions of what that reimplementation is and how people can help with it keep being answered with "I don't knows", "Don't you worry about that", or half answers, people aren't excited to help with anything. Other projects have a clear road map, clear set of design goals, and a clear structure on who is in charge of what - why doesn't the Hurd and associated projects? Road maps are important. I meet people every day who are absolutely convinced that the Hurd doesn't even exist, really - that there is no usable implementations of, that it doesn't boot, or do anything useful. Road maps can give people a clear idea of what your projects existing capabilities are, and also tell them whats going to come in the future and when it can be expected. 100000% agreed. If we are sure we need HURD-NG, it is no-sense to work in Hurd on gnumach anymore. To ask people to work in Hurd on gnumach is then to ask hackers to work in something that wont be useful. If we are sure we need HURD-NG, lets call it HURD, stop the development of the current Hurd on gnumach, write new webpages, make a new development group able to help Marcus, and replace the current project. Having people working in the current Hurd project waiting for rumours about the new microkernel doesnt seems very logic to me.
