Thomas Bushnell

Thomas Bushnell (born December 13, 1967), formerly known as Michael Bushnell, is a software developer and Gregorian friar. He was the founder and principal architect of GNU's official kernel project, the GNU Hurd. Bushnell was Hurd's official maintainer from its instigation until November 2003. Bushnell was previously a Debian developer, and was employed by Google LLC from July 2010 until the January 2024 layoffs. He is a member of Saint Mark's Episcopal Church in Glendale, California.

Bushnell attended Carnegie Mellon University for one year in 1985–1986, and then almost two years at the University of New Mexico. In 2007 he completed his PhD at the University of California, Irvine under supervisor Professor , with his dissertation titled Peter Abelard's Conception of the Good.

Software development GNU Hurd

The GNU Hurd kernel was launched in 1990 and Bushnell was the lead developer. This kernel was to be one of the last free software components needed to complete the GNU operating system. The project was experiencing delays however for various reasons, one of them being that Bushnell "several times redesigned and rewrote large parts of the code based on what he had learned, rather than trying to make the Hurd run as soon as possible", according to Richard Stallman. Stallman stated that "it was good design practice, but it wasn’t the right practice for our goal: to get something working ASAP".

Comments on Stallman Following Richard Stallman's resignation as president of the Free Software Foundation and his guest position at MIT, Bushnell wrote on Medium that although he felt sympathy for Stallman, he believed it was good for the free software community that he had stepped down.