I thought ReactOS had specifically undertaken an audit to make sure
their code *was* "clean" and conformed to US laws w/r/t to reverse
engineering? There's a statement to this effect here:
http://www.reactos.org/wiki/index.php/Audit
Is it because it was only an internal audit that it's still considered
legally suspect?
--Brendan
On 12/08/2014 10:39 AM, James McKenzie wrote:
One thing about ReactOS. It is not "clean" code and could possibly lead to
legal action. It is one thing to watch what code does in a black box
situation. It's wholly different to replicate code.
No one wants to sponsor activities of the second type.
James
On Dec 7, 2014 7:49 PM, "Andrew Udvare" <audvare@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On 2014-12-07, at 14:57, jay@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
If you want a stand alone Wine, you are looking at React OS,
which is awful ....
I have noticed that also. Does anyone here know anything about the
ReactOS project? Is it ever going to be a respectable free non-Unix
operating system, like Haiku or Plan 9?
Yes. To answer your second question, I do not generally think so unless a
company really wants to fund and do it. It has been a 100% voluntary effort
from day 1 and has made a decent amount of progress. It borrows a good
portion of Wine for its code but also does things Wine does not such as
work with devices. ReactOS is pariah-like. People know it exists but almost
nobody uses it.
Their main problem is motivation. Who really wants to build a full clone
of Windows (as opposed to do something more original)? There have been
attempts in the past but none have come so far as ReactOS. I only defend
the project (as with Wine) in the sense that someday these old applications
may not run and we have an alternative to emulation. However, I do not
think ReactOS or Wine will be the norm for running older applications over
emulation unless it is fully supported (like how Wine has the commercial
product).
ReactOS had a good initial start. A Windows replacement when Windows went
south with Vista was the thought. But that faded quickly. Key contributors
left the project due to lack of interest, and it got stuck for at least a
year, however the website was maintained seemingly. The project recently
was part of a IndieGogo funding effort, but even that failed to meet its
goal. There clearly is just not a lot of interest.
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/reactos-community-edition
Would it be cool to have a viable Windows replacement? Maybe. Given that I
only use Windows VMs to test IE it does not matter to me. It could maybe
help people still using Windows 3.x/OS/2/95 move to something modern and
supported (if those companies are not getting support from Microsoft), but
still runs their old applications. However, I am pretty sure we do not want
them on a Windows-like kernel/OS in general.
I would not call ReactOS awful (in fact I respect the effort), but similar
to telling some company their product does not work in Wine, it is rather
exotic.
Andrew
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://www.winehq.org/pipermail/wine-users/attachments/20141208/3c32cca4/attachment.html>
