[robespierre]

It's overly generous to refer to Hurd as a research project, as it doesn't emanate from any defined programme of research. Based instead around egos of developers like Mr Bushnell, who in his own way does a fair job justifying the medieval stereotype of the venal, piggish mendicant friar.

There were working, successful Unix variants based on microkernels (including CMU Mach), including NeXTStep, OSF/1, and MkLinux. The difference is that they were developed by qualified researchers (in the case of NeXT, the legendary Avi Tevanian from CMU) and not blinkered ideologues.