@giacomo
I don't get the gripe. The Plan9 suggestion is equally valid for a hypothetical UNIX clone with "user-friendly" command names.
@rozenglass @galdor
I feel the biggest problem is the approach of volunteer projects, kernel, apps, GUI, whatever. People could keep the parts of their project modular, and view the project as a distribution of sorts. That would keep it feasible to try a distribution with, say, the Haiku desktop on top of Plan9. But Haiku needs great multi-threading in-kernel.