So what is the state of the Hurd? Is it vaporware, like Duke Nukem Forever? Fortunately not: the code exists, there is still work going on (for instance as part of Google Summer of Code), and there are even some relatively functional Hurd distributions. Let's look first at the code and the current architecture, and then at the Hurd distributions.

Interested in finding bright, enthusiastic new contributors to your open source project? Apply to be a mentoring organization in the Google Summer of Code program! We are excited to announce the organization application period is now open.

Interested in coding on Tor and getting paid for it by Google? If you are a student, Tor project has good news for you: it has been accepted as a mentoring organization for Google Summer of Code 2010 together with The Electronic Frontier Foundation!

A month of the Hurd: Arch Hurd, updated Debian GNU/Hurd QEMU image, and GSoC students.

"A Dutch university has landed a European Research Council grant to continue work on a Unix-type operating system that aims to be more reliable and secure than GNU/Linux or Microsoft Windows..." -- see also The GNU Hurd project

«Hurd having been in development for so long, but still not production-ready; and with Linux as a mature free kernel being firmly established as the de-facto standard kernel for the GNU system -- people often wonder: why haven't developers abandoned the Hurd long ago?

"Hello,

it has been more than three years since the last "Bits from the Debian GNU/Hurd porters", high time for an update on the port:

* Snapshot releases
* Base and toolchain status
* Xen support
* Autobuilder availability and archive coverage improved
* Developer machine
* Summer of Code 2008
* Still no debian-installer
..."

KDE has been accepted as a mentoring organization in Google Summer of Code 2013. For students, now is the perfect time to start working on their proposal. The KDE community maintains an ideas page which is an excellent starting point. This year KDE will also participate in the Free and Open Source Outreach Program for Women, and will also be hosting Season of KDE 2013.

"David Chisnall takes a look at the GNU Project's infamous HURD kernel, exploring some of the features that make it unique and some that have found their way into other systems. [...] Even in its current state, HURD exists to prove a point: It’s possible to have a complete and usable system running nothing other than GNU code." -- http://www.informit.com/articles/printerfriendly.aspx?p=1180992