@colinsmatt11 @screwtape I am pretty sure that GNU Hurd was the original plan; if it is Linux now, it has been forced upon GNU by the neverending development story of the Hurd kernel.
Should we criticize Stallman, it should be for the decision to start the GNU project with doing GCC and friends. It is a big question if the Linux kernel (and countless other free C-based UNIX utilities) had happened at all, if not for there being a gratis high-quality C development system.