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The State Of ReactOS

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  • seba
    replied
    I honestly don't see the point on this project besides doing it just for fun.

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  • Ancurio
    replied
    Originally posted by akincer View Post
    If it's XP binary compatibility they're shooting for initially, they have at most 7 years of patent threats and probably less. After that, any and all patents filed related to XP should have expired I believe.
    Can you even attack FOSS projects that have no commercial face? I thought all of the patent claims against Linux systems were only made when a company made money off of devices running Linux.

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  • frign
    replied
    Agreement with BO$$?

    Originally posted by BO$$ View Post
    Interesting project. Unfortunately, no chance of ever working as good as Windows. Not enough manpower.
    Wow, it honestly is the first time I have to agree with you.

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  • akincer
    replied
    If it's XP binary compatibility they're shooting for initially, they have at most 7 years of patent threats and probably less. After that, any and all patents filed related to XP should have expired I believe.

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  • AJSB
    replied
    I follow this project for a long time...at some time it almost died but lately they have more devs, included WINE code were it was logical to do so and seem to be "getting there" with lot's of code rewrite....i believe that in 1-2 more years we can get something interesting to replace WinXP...witch is interesting because support for XP will close down in 2014.

    As for be sued, as long as keep code clean and is simply reverse-engineered Micro$haft can do squat to them, at most, only FUD...

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  • Vim_User
    replied
    Originally posted by Kemosabe View Post
    BUT what is the point of a Windows compatible OS that is capable to run mostly Windows XP software and drivers?
    For example to replace the soon to be unsupported XP on machines that have to run XP compatible software or drivers for whatever reason. In the same way you could ask: What is the point of developing Wine, it can at this time only play DirectX 9, but not the newer versions.

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  • XorEaxEax
    replied
    Originally posted by gamerk2 View Post
    They can't. The legal rational for ReactOS is the same as the one for WINE.
    This is brought up in this talk, and the speaker (Ionescu) mentions that he has no idea of whether or not ReactOS is implementing Microsoft patented functionality as he (and other developers I presume) refuse to look at Microsoft patents since if they would be sued they would be subject to increased damages should they have been aware of the patents in question.

    I do think that if Microsoft would like to shut down ReactOS they would easily find some broad bogus patent through which they could litigate, and obviously ReactOS would have no money to go to court so they would have to yield.

    On the other hand, ReactOS is nowhere near being a threat to Microsoft Windows so the devs likely aren't particularly worried.

    Originally posted by gamerk2 View Post
    ReactOS nearly died because one developer was found to have not clean-room-reverse-engineered one block of code, and they had to audit EVERYTHING for compliance as a result.
    While I don't think ReactOS was actually close to dying during the clean room debacle, I recall that several old-timer developers jumped ship at that time (don't know if they have returned since then), the developer who added the non-clean room code was actually Alex Ionescu, the guy doing the youtube talk here, so has obviously been 'forgiven'.

    Which is a good think as he is an authority on the NT kernel (and windows subsystems in general) and also proficient as a developer.

    Overall ReactOS is a great project which suffers from the same thing that Haiku OS does, which is a desperate lack of developers.

    One benefit of ReactOS versus Haiku though is that once ReactOS compability is greatly improved, users will have access to the huge amount of available Windows software, meanwhile Haiku OS will still be plagued by the severe lack of software.

    That said, given the extremely small resources available to these projects, the amount of funtionality they've been able to achieve is nothing short of amazing.

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  • Cthulhux
    replied
    Originally posted by Kemosabe View Post
    drivers under Linux is no issue at all nowadays.
    Graphic cards and WiFi are much of an issue.

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  • Danny3
    replied
    Good job Alex. Greetings from Romania!

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  • Kemosabe
    replied
    Originally posted by Cthulhux View Post
    It's not wrong to use a Windows-like OS that's developed slower than Windows, given that it won't adapt "tiles" so soon...
    Sure, of course! BUT what is the point of a Windows compatible OS that is capable to run mostly Windows XP software and drivers? Their Application database doesn't look promising at all. I just doubt ReactOS can find users in forseeable future even if there were a stable release ... :-/
    ReactOS is only superior to wine when it comes to drivers BUT drivers under Linux is no issue at all nowadays. U know what i mean?

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