Upstart is an event based init system that is GPL licensed, however upstream contributions are under a CLA that permits proprietary relicensing.

As of Jan 2 2013, Debian is considering adopting Upstart as an init system on GNU/Linux, and on GNU/kFreeBSD when the port to kFreeBSD is finished.

The following are the words of Colin Watson on the debian-ctte@lists.debian.org mailing list and list the requirements of a potential HURD port:

I haven't looked at this in much detail, and I suspect Dimitri hasn't yet although IIRC he did express some interest in doing so. But I haven't seen anyone else try to outline the scope of a port, so let me try to do so for the sake of general understanding. As far as I know, the hardest parts would be inotify, ptrace, and prctl (PR_SET_CHILD_SUBREAPER).

inotify is used to notice changes to configuration files. This is certainly helpful for users, but it isn't critical as "initctl reload-configuration" works without it. We could probably do without this with the aid of a dpkg trigger.

ptrace is used for "expect fork" and "expect daemon"; as I indicated in another post, I think it would be preferable to avoid these in Debian and quite possibly to compile them out. (This would mean we wouldn't be able to translate Ubuntu jobs quite as directly, and a number of important jobs would definitely need to be changed, but the conversion isn't usually particularly difficult.)

prctl (PR_SET_CHILD_SUBREAPER) is used to make SIGCHLD notification work properly when Upstart is supervising a user session. This isn't a required feature and could easily be compiled out until suitable kernel support is available (this actually seems like the sort of thing that could be done in the Hurd without too much difficulty, but I haven't looked into it). If absent, it might well impede the ability to do an advanced desktop port, but it wouldn't get in the way of porting the bulk of services.

There might also be odds and ends around the details of wait status handling.

inotify seems to be a feature that is often used in GNU/Linux programs, and implementing the feature in the HURD seems like a better and more rewarding option than porting the code in Upstart.

Although many daemons double fork, that behavior seems to be dying out, and one can comfortably ignore the "expect fork/daemon" functionality of Upstart (and compile it out).

See also the discussion about upstart on the systemd page.