The most useless free software projects

What follows is an opinion piece. The criteria to define the most useless free software projects are somewhat subjective and of course readers are welcome to agree or disagree.

The projects on this list have been around for a long time and their usefulness has faded over the years. or there are other alternatives that better meet the needs of users. However, they continue to consume time and resources that would be better spent elsewhere.

The most useless free software projects

Debian GNU / Hurd

When Richard Stallman started the free software movement, he was thinking not only of licenses and some tools, but also of creating an operating system to replace UNIX.  The base of that operating system that never arrived was GNU/Hurd.

In order to build this operating system GNU/Hurd offers:

• A set of protocols for the interaction between the different components. They include definitions of file and directory manipulation interfaces and path name resolution.
• A set of servers in which these protocols are implemented. Including file systems, network protocols and authentication. .

In short, what it is about is, in Stallman's own words:

The mission of the Hurd project is: to create a suitable general-purpose kernel for the GNU operating system, that is viable for everyday use, and that gives users and programs as much control over their computing environment as possible.

Hurd currently runs on top of the GNU Match microkernel.

A version of Debian was built on the basis of GNU/Hurd. The description of the project itself justifies its inclusion on this list.

Hurd is not finished yet and is not suitable for everyday use, but work is continuing on it. The Hurd is currently only being developed for the i386 architecture, although ports to other architectures will be made once the system is more stable.[

OpenOffice

What was long ago the only open source office suite has long had companyAlas, the alternatives are so much better. I already wrote about this a post and I am not going to bore you with the same arguments.

ReactOS

promised power use Windows programs without paying Windows license. It was never able to achieve the same software and hardware compatibility that was achieved using WINE, let alone the operating system it was intended to emulate.