Hurd was dead when the initial commit was made. They slacked around for years because one project they depended on had potential licensing issues and by the time work kinda started to maybe begin, Linux was out there and there really was no point for Hurd. In the mean time, Hurd was left behind so far behind Linux that there was no chance of it ever becoming a viable alternative, and if it ever would become a viable alternative, all it would do would be fracturing the open source kernel landscape which would be detremental to device driver support.

Not even Stallman believes that there's a point to hurd.