Why is HAL a bad word?

Tim, All,

After the discussion both here and on the suse list about the removal of HAL, that brought up a question that I don't fully understand. I know that everyone is moving away from HAL and that it is the way of the future, but "Why?"

Briefly - what is wrong with HAL? Is it dead upstream? Does is pose limitations on the ability to do X or Y going forward? If so what are X or Y? Is it udev? What?

Like Qt3, all of the past versions of KDE3 and TDE have used HAL and work fantastically - what is the motivation for dumping it?

A short sentence or two would help me understand -- or a simply link to why if you have one will do. Thanks, I just want to make sure I understand the issue better...