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ReactOS (Free and Open Source Windows): Jérôme Gardou hired to work full-time
- tmccrary55 6y agoSeems like a risky investment, considering the Supreme Court might make this project a huge copyright infringement due to Oracle v Google.
- faitswulff 6y agoI wonder if the hand of the US Supreme Court reaches as far as Germany? Responsible for the content of these pages is: ReactOS Deutschland e.V. Am Bach 11 33378 Rheda-Wiedenbrück Germany https://reactos.org/legal/ https://reactos.org/legal/
- pessimizer 6y agoWho knows, with copyright embedded in trade treaties.
- devenblake 6y agoI think the writing is on the wall for ReactOS. When it gets close to being able to be used as a daily OS Microsoft will sue because they've been accused of ripping off the Windows Research Kernel[1] and because Windows NT3.5, 2000, and XP code has been floating around the net for a while now - it's going to get harder and harder to keep the room clean when anyone can contribute. That being said, some of ReactOS's features are really cool and I hope something comes of it. [1]: https://www.osnews.com/story/130275/reactos-a-ripoff-of-the-windows-research-kernel-claims-microsoft-kernel-engineer/ https://www.osnews.com/story/130275/reactos-a-ripoff-of-the-...
- dagurp 6y agoWine has managed to survive so far. Hopefully ReactOS will be no different.
- cferr 6y agoWine is only a syscall translation layer. It's not an implementation of Windows.
- jacobush 6y agoYeah but that makes Wine sound simpler than it is. The bulk of what makes ReactOS tick is from Wine. Wine is a syscall layer plus a reimplementation of all user mode DLLs in a Windows installation.
- 0thgen 6y agoi hope not; it seems like a really cool project. if microsoft were smart they'd support the development. how much longer will closed-source OS's beat out open-source ones? it seems like at some point the markets will adopt it as a cheaper, more secure alternative. some areas of the public sector already are: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Linux_adopters https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Linux_adopters
- dvfjsdhgfv 6y ago> if microsoft were smart they'd support the development Really? I'd say they'd do whatever they can to obstruct its development, issuing baseless accusations and introducing quirks in the code to make sure ReactOS is incomaptible with other applications. This strategy worked miracles in the past and is one of the main reasons Bill became the richest person in the world.
- 0thgen 6y agoyou're probably right
- jqpabc123 6y agoI think the writing is on the wall for completely djfferent reasons: 1-Lack of funding and development progress. After 24 years, they're still not even close to version 1.0. 2-Microsoft is working toward Windows being freely available (zero cost). This dampens the motivation for an open source alternative. 3-Drivers for the latest hardware will always be an issue due to #1 above.
- geogra4 6y agoI think really the use case is to run in a VM to handle old code and keep security up to date. I wouldn't want to run it on bare hardware for that reason (3)
- Koshkin 6y agoWell, security is a whole another kettle of fish. I'd be wondering how secure ReactOS is (or can ever be).
- Frenchgeek 6y agoAt the very least ReactOS makes for a good test suite for Wine...
- jqpabc123 6y agoOld code? Do you need to run 16 bit code under Win64? There are solutions for this. Here are a couple: https://github.com/otya128/winevdm https://github.com/otya128/winevdm https://www.dosbox.com/information.php?page=0 https://www.dosbox.com/information.php?page=0
- flyinghamster 6y ago> Microsoft is working toward Windows being freely available (zero cost). I don't see that happening anytime soon, other than the usual "hidden in the price of the machine" way it's usually handled. Not to mention, it would inevitably be tied to a cloud account at the price of your privacy, and your risk of being "deplatformed" from your own machines for doing something that Microsoft (or Hollywood, or one of their AIs) doesn't like. I'd love for ReactOS to succeed, but they're up against a constantly-moving target.
- blinkingled 6y agoI am fascinated with people's ability to continue to motivate themselves in face of hopeless complexity and possibility of zero (even negative) returns. I of course hope something good comes out of ReactOS in whatever form - kudos to the developers that have kept it going for so long!
- fps_doug 6y agoThe only reason I'd work on it would be the learning experience. Sometimes to understand why things are done the way they are, you just have to build your own version of it. Windows sure has a bunch of interesting architectural properties. Last time ReactOS came up here some folks were concerned about legality too, and I think there even was a salty Microsoft employee ranting about stolen code from the source leaks. I don't think ReactOS will ever reach the point of being a viable Windows replacement, so nothing Microsoft needs to be afraid of. I can somewhat see how you're personally offended that someone stole your code and doesn't credit you (but then again that wouldn't be exactly smart in that case). Best case for Microsoft is that ReactOS raises future Microsoft devs for free. Just check the progress every now and then, if someone stands out, hire them.
- dvfjsdhgfv 6y ago> Last time ReactOS came up here some folks were concerned about legality too, and I think there even was a salty Microsoft employee ranting about stolen code from the source leaks. Link to the actual dicussion here with the comments of the MS employee: https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=axelriet https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=axelriet ReactOS developer's explanation on how they work: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2D9ExVc0G10 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2D9ExVc0G10
- snvzz 6y agoI saw the whole deal as cheap FUD. They have nothing on ReactOS, but they want to discourage people from looking at it.
- z3t4 6y agoNo. Microsoft will market Windows as the OS most compatible with Windows.
- CivBase 6y agoI'm not so sure. Why would Microsoft want to shut this down? I suspect most of Microsoft's revenue comes from business and OEM licenses - neither of which are likely to switch to ReactOS. Even if ReactOS was stable and perfectly compatible with Windows, I doubt many people would switch to it. I don't have any data on what portion of users have installed an operating system on their personal computer, but I bet it's extremely small. ReactOS isn't competing with Microsoft's most profitable software. By allowing ReactOS to exist, non-Windows users are more likely to stay within the Windows ecosystem. Microsoft still retains control of the development direction for the platform and they can still sell their software to those users. Even ignoring the bad publicity Microsoft would get from the tech community for shutting down ReactOS, I just don't see a good reason for them to do it. It seems much more likely to me that Microsoft will use only legal action so far as to ensure ReactOS never becomes a viable "Windows killer", but I doubt they'll so far as to shut it down altogether.
- kokey 6y agoI also think the only way for Windows to survive long term is to allow evolutionary branches and clones of it, like how the AT&T and BSD UNIXes and later on Linux and SysV and later on Darwin and Android managed to remain so successful.
- grawprog 6y ago>I suspect most of Microsoft's revenue comes from business and OEM licenses - neither of which are likely to switch to ReactOS. Even if ReactOS was stable and perfectly compatible with Windows, I doubt many people would switch to it I see Microsoft leaving ReactOS alone until it starts biting into that pie. If manufacturers started making deals to have ReactOS pre-installed on machines, that's when Microsoft's going to go in. I doubt they're going to bother otherwise though.
- oscargrouch 6y agoI disagree about this (stability/compatibility) being the point where it could trigger Microsoft. First this is a bad marketing move for Microsoft while is taking years to scrap the image of bad and monopolistic player that wants to control everything. So i think that the time they would at least consider to take legal action against React OS, would be when (in a possible reality) it start to gets popularity and big players started to ship things with it. Giving it would be this third-party (lets say Dell or Lenovo) that would be sued for it, and giving all the dangers such a move would bring, its very unlikely that any CEO in its right would make this move. So thats why i think is highly unlikely, giving ReactOS is so small, that it cant be considered a threat, except for a CEO's with conspiratory tendencies (A guy like Ballmer would probably do this stupid mistake).
- skee0083 6y agoSue an open source project based in Russia? HAHAHAHAHA good luck with that.
- nailer 6y agoDirect link (OSnews -> Register -> HN): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20341933 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20341933
- badsectoracula 6y agoWine is a much bigger target and threat than ReactOS (and ReactOS uses a lot of code from Wine) since unlike ReactOS, Wine can use the latest drivers and hardware via Linux. Also unlike ReactOS, Wine has been pushed a lot by companies like Valve explicitly so that people can move away from Windows. Also if it is found that someone did indeed copy code from Windows, then they can simply replace that code. This isn't the first time such an accusation would happen to open source software - even the Linux kernel was targeted like that, yet you do not see people saying that the writing is on the wall for Linux because anyone can contribute to it.
- pelasaco 6y agoTo work 3 months full-time.
- jacobush 6y agoFocusing on stability now, which is nice to see. It’s what’s been needed the most for a long time now. It already has enough features to build appliances on.