... and so development is slow.

My friend, you may be a champion in the Understatement of the Century Contest.

Sure, there are many entirely respectable reasons why Hurd never got finished.

But, ah, erm ... ... you see, I feel an acute sense of embarassment when I'm about to point out something that is obvious. So blindingly obvious that it feels preposterous to have to say it at all. But, here goes.

It's time to give up!

The Hurd project has failed! Blue blazes, tarnation and a monkey, it's been seventeen fucking years!

There are software projects for which a delay of seventeen days is intolerable, although that is usually salvageable. A project that is seventeen weeks too late, on the other hand, is universally recognized as a failure.

And we all know about projects that come in seventeen months too late. We all know that someone, somewhere in a project like that was thoroughly incompetent.

There are simply no words, no satire, no amount of acid-tongued vituperation that could do justice to a software development project that still isn't finished after seventeen years.