ReactOS is one of those projects that has been on the net for a long time. You see it resurface every now and then and each time it looks better than it did before. I have to hand it to the their team, they have tenacity.
For others like me who are unfamiliar with the word tenacity: "The state or quality of being tenacious", which in turn is "Holding or tending to hold persistently to something, such as a point of view" or "Tending to retain; retentive".
When I use that word I'm conveying "doggedness: persistent determination." (It's part of my Googled vocabulary.) Either way, it's certainly meant as a compliment. :)
I did. I wasn't trying to be secretive about it either, considering I was quoted and I then thanked him for pointing it out. Have I confused anyone here?
I'm surprised not to see mention of this though in the comments here: ReactOS is now "dead" as it is being rewritten to use the wine project as the actual codebase. The aforementioned slowness in development is the primary cause. The new project is codename ARWINSS: http://www.reactos.org/wiki/Arwinss
It seems that ARWINSS is purely a replacement for a few userspace components (specifically user32 and gdi32, not that those are small by any means (having written my own implementations, my hat goes off to anyone who attempts it)), not the ROS kernel and all that entails. Am I incorrect here? The reason I follow ROS is that it allows compatibility with existing NT drivers, which is huge in my opinion, so moving away from the ROS kernel would be a Bad Thing (TM) in my eyes.
Kudos to the creators for keeping at it. But in the end I don't see if being of much consequence.
If it ever does get out of Alpha and is viable than Microsoft will likely stop at nothing to bury it with lawsuits. They'd have to because it would be a free version of their core product that, by definition, wouldn't be susceptible to all the viruses and malware that Windows is.
So the bottom line is it could have a lot of useful applications but you really couldn't have enough faith in its future to use it for those applications.
I would say it could still be susceptible to malware since a lot of it gets installed on account of user stupidity, but anything that requires exploitation of a specific memory address will fail. Of course though, I think the latest version of Windows has protection against that as well by making it difficult or impossible to determine what addresses will be used when a program is ran. (Maybe, my memory of that is admittedly fuzzy.)
Why would Microsoft care? Their revenue core is the shell, app frameworks, apps, not the kernel and a few system utilities. If by some miracle ReactOS manages to get major public uptake on the strength of kernel superiority, Microsoft can simply share in the fun.
Sadly, Alex Ionescu (the developer you mentioned) dropped the tinykrnl project when he left for MS. It was a completely source-compatible, reverse-engineered reimplementation of the NT kernel, which had a lot of promise for everything from education to security research. But in going to MS, he killed the project and the few other developers (including myself, although I did very little) all went in different directions.
That's one of the projects I most regret seeing die. One day when I actually have free time, maybe I'll start it back up. Amazingly, it was very simple to work on, there's just a lot to do; anyone with a basic knowledge of x86 assembly and how `cl' works could jump into it fairly easily, since it was hand-decompiled line for line from the existing source, then commented from there. There were no problems to solve (a good or bad thing, depending on your perspective), since it was directly taken from the existing kernel and drivers.
So what's the point of this Operating System? Kill Microsoft and the thousands of developers that are working their just because you don't like them or the name of the company?
Wouldn't this huge time and effort be spent on something we need but don't have? And yes, charge me for using it. I study medicine, but I won't work as a doctor for free.
You Sir, are a disgrace to the entire healthcare community. Hope you never manage to take the Hippocratic Oath as you will be breaking it at every chance you get. Enjoy your career as scumbag-of-a-doctor.
Yes, that is my opinion alone, but I do hold it strongly.
I don't know what the guy you replied to was going on about with respect to Microsoft, but...seriously? He's a scumbag because he doesn't want to work for free? Do you perform your profession for free?
I do, on occasions. I have, for example, helped a small local museum with their website for free. I've also helped a couple of volunteer groups with setting up computers. And, if in the future, a group I feel is worthy of help, but cannot afford to pay me, asks me to do something which I have the time and skills to handle I'll probably give then a hand.
What makes you think doctors don't work pro bono at times? Both my parents are physicians and I know they sometimes volunteer their medical services for no cost. Even hospitals sometimes volunteer resources but physical goods aren't free or cheap.
The difference between our profession and the medical profession however is that, unlike ours, software development, whose skills can be acquired at basically no significant cash cost (other than a cheap desktop PC), many doctors have to begin their careers with tens of thousands of dollars in debt, assuming they could afford it at all even with loans. I don't think we should begrudge medical folks for wanting to be paid, and paid well, as long as that is not the only thing they are in it for.
What is the difference between the medical profession and the legal services profession? It is just as pricey to become a lawyer. Yet even lawyers have the concept of "pro bono".
True. Perhaps it's because medical school is harder than law school. Or perhaps because if a doctor gives free medical advice, and something goes wrong, someone could die and he get sued. If a lawyer gives bad advice, the typical downside is not as bad, plus, a lawyer is less afraid of getting sued since he can defend it against better, cheaper, more efficiently. Just brainstorming aloud.
fwiw: working as a professional (in any field) does not make you a scumbag. but justifying personal material gain by belittling professionals who volunteer their time and skill for free, is obnoxious at best and the very scum of this earth at worst.
It's handy for the same reason FreeDOS is handy -- eventually Microsoft will EOL the platform, but there will still be programs that you need to run (for whatever reason) that require that platform.
You're right that there's no point in chasing the most recent Windows version.
> but there will still be programs that you need to run (for whatever reason) that require that platform.
But why would that be better, or even preferable, over Wine on top of a Unix-like OS with current programs to run sde by side with your legacy app?
It's they project, their motivation, but I can't share it or understand why not devote these resources to make Wine better (or a better Wine, BTW). It's pretty obvious they are fairly bright guys.
I have to agree with the Unix zealot (I am probably one myself - Unix is a local maximum in the OS space, as eloquently illustrated by the failure of, for instance, Plan 9): of all OS concepts (and with so many exciting ones - like Plan 9) there are to be reinterpreted/reimplemented, why Windows?
I'm quite sure that there are some software that is impossible to run on Wine. Drivers and other stuff that touches the kernel comes to mind.
And ReactOS does make Wine better as they share some code:
"ReactOS works with the WINE project to share as much programming effort as possible. ReactOS depends on Wine mainly for user mode DLLs. Where appropriate, patches to Wine are also submitted by the development team, and patch contributors are often directed to Wine if it is felt that the patches would benefit them." <http://www.reactos.org/wiki/WINE>;
I remember having read about the ReactOS/Wine cooperation, but I completely forgot about it while making my comment.
Still, it's not the kernel side of the driver that requires a bare OS, but the hardware side that requires the OS not to interfere. The foreign kernel can be emulated. A Windows-like OS can help you use hardware that has no drivers for other OSs but I never had this issue, nor know anyone who needs to run legacy hardware that can't also run a legacy OS.
Devotion of resource arguments are detrimental to the spirit of liberty in OSS. I think of these works more like exploration than some effort ultimately asymptotic to a goal. Exploration is hardly ever an unrewarding pursuit. And it has beneficial externalities. In this case more than most even!
From http://www.winehq.org/site/acknowledgement:
"Wine is at the heart of ReactOS' Win32 support. Initial work improved Wine's portability by cleaning things up so MinGW could compile it. From there, a considerable amount of effort was spent improving Wine's shell32 infrastructure and various controls. The ReactOS team is also responsible for the regedit and task manager utilities."
More details are in http://www.reactos.org/wiki/WINE
I understand your point, still, exploring the Windows-like OS space is not what I would consider fun. I even happen to use some of the beneficial externalities of their exploration and I am glad they explore it and devote their resources to the side-effects I enjoy.
And those are their resources. I respect their decision, even if I cannot agree with their taste for OSs ;-)
It's simpler, if all you're running is windows programs? The third world has been a windows fiefdom for ages, and they have to rely on legacy hardware where any spurious processes running mean slowdown.
I don't think there are any legal issues here (but IANAL), and I can see a free Windows clone being useful to some people. However, Microsoft has a 25-year head start so these guys have some serious catching up to do. Until Microsoft goes out of business, I doubt they will ever have a system compatible with a current Windows version.
That would be OK by me: I'd prefer to keep myself and my parents at the XP SP3 level quasi-forever as long as the OS was supported (I myself an still using Windows Eudora as my email client).
Well, I suppose eventually Firefox el. al. will drop XP support, but that day will hopefully be far in the future.
Add this to the list of things you're "sure" about, but shouldn't be.
Nowhere in the EULA for Microsoft Office (their most profitable product) do I find text requiring you to run it on Microsoft Windows. I read it top-to-bottom, then searched for "Windows" (which never occurs) and then "operating system" (which occurs only to warn you that they use your operating system to get to the Internet).
This is correct on the face of it. However, some of the terms, though vague, effectively prohibit running Office under Wine, etc. The following phrase occurs in the Office 2007 EULA: "...In doing so, you must comply with any technical limitations in the software that only allow you to use it in certain ways." The phrase "...technical limitations..." is present four times in total; particularly combined with some of the license verification verbage certainly could be used in legal arguments as rbanffy suggested
How would you interpret the phrase "...In doing so, you must comply with any technical limitations in the software that only allow you to use it in certain ways?"
You are right about Office 2007 (the one license I found), but you are wrong about Internet Explorer. It's license states clearly you can only use IE if you have a license for Windows XP, Vista, Server 2003 or 2008 (the IE8 on my wife's corporate notebook has a Brazilian license that doesn't mention Windows 7)
I think you're seeing a knee-jerk reaction to what is seen as a knee-jerk reaction to Microsoft. The truth is, MS clearly sucks beyond any hope. People are sick of hearing it, though, so especially if they use Windows and don't know any better, they deny it and become angry.
