О, а вот и иллюстрация к уже сказанному где-то насчёт того, что MINIX есть и без изменений в подходе к разработке останется никому не нужной игрушкой (и в embedded тоже):---
I was convinced by ast's comments for a while until I wanted to contribute there. I'd hacked on the Hurd for a while and was thinking that it would be nice to work on a project that actually had momentum.
There are a series of things that kept me from going further:
* A strong resistance of things GPL. To the point where they're not really interested in hearing about bugs compiling things like coreutils.
* A strong rejection of testsuites. They said that they would accept tests, but that if a test ever broke, the test would simply be removed. One of the things that I think is mostly interesting about the Minix architecture is that so much of the system could be build-time tested while being built as a regular user.
* Private development model. Discussions happen around their lab rather than on lists and newsgroups. I started working on an ELF interpretor only to be told that a core dev was reworking this file, and that I should come back in a few months.
I still argue that the Microkernel debate was never lost - simply that to this day, no real contender has ever shown up.
--- http://lwn.net/Articles/218353/
И именно открытость разработки при адекватном управлении процессом и есть, наверное, главное достижение Linux как free software project. Кто этого ещё не понял -- ССЗБ ;-)