Hurd's relation to Apple's Darwin? (Score 2)

I have understod that Apple's new open source operating system Darwin is also based on the Mach microkenel. They have propably made the necessary changes to it making it usable in a variety of practical applications. Why not make Darwin the base for the new age open source OS?

It seems that Darwin will have a pretty secure future due to Apples deep commitment and there will also be a large number of commercial applications to Mac OS X available in the future, which could be ported to the open source Darwin. In addition it is pretty compatible with Linux/Unix systems so Linux users would feel at home quickly.

As OS X is practically Darwin added with Apple's proprietary components, why not make open source versions of these components and voila, a Mac OS X compatible free OS, with a superb UI, easy software installation etc. It would probably be easier than developping Wine for Linux!

Any insights on these ideas?