7 ms·
ReactOS as a second OS in Russian government's software freedom effort
- jarcane 11y agoAmoral tech strikes again. Good luck with that; Russia isn't interested in software freedom, they're just not interested in something from outside Russia they can't control. EDIT: A friend informs me that the head of the project is himself Russian, and already works largely under government funding. So in retrospect, less "amoral tech nerds take money from wherever they can get it" and more "some Russian bureaucrats want their own Red Star OS".
- userulluipeste 11y agoLet's hope it'll transcend out of its current amoral tech state! It has the potential to become the building block of choice for many use-cases where other solutions are too expensive (in terms of required efforts).
- bad_user 11y agoThat's an odd statement to make, since freedom is indistinguishable from having control.
- pgeorgi 11y ago> Russia isn't interested in software freedom, they're just not interested in something from outside Russia they can't control Which is exactly what the first paragraph states: "are pursuing measures to rid vendor lock-in of strategically important software" Why should Russia (or any organization, from 1 person up to nations) prefer vendor lock-in over something that they can control?
- jarcane 11y agoThe distinction is whether it's a question of freeing it for everyone's control, or merely trading foreign control for their own. Russia doesn't want GNU, they just want a Russian Microsoft that's in Putin's pocket like everything else. Take a look at what's happened to VKontakte some time.
- pgeorgi 11y agoVKontakte can't be easily forked, while ReactOS is GPL. Of course the Russian government wants to be able to control their systems, and any positive effects for others are at best some nice PR. How does that detract any value from ReactOS (or Linux, which is their "other" desktop and server OS)? One of the principles of Open Source (compared to Free Software) is the idea that people and organizations work in a project where every contributor works in their self-interest. Why is this suddenly a bad thing?
- Pi_User5 11y agoReactOS is free and open source and is released under the GPL license.
- EGreg 11y agoIsn't software freedom about someone from outside not controlling your stuff?
- sudioStudio64 11y agoI have a feeling that a clone of windows 2000 is going to have some hilari-bad security bugs...
- jeditobe 11y agoActually, at the current moment ReactOS is clone of Windows 2003, not the 2000. That is the big difference!
- sudioStudio64 11y agoI know this position isn't popular, but I don't think that will help. They are reverse engineering a really complicated system. Do you think that they have the same kinds of controls that it took MS literally a decade and millions of to dollars develop?...Controls that that were expensive in time and money that then only improved their development to the extent that it has? (far, far from perfect.) Maybe...and this is a big maybe...there is a enough of a difference between react and windows that normal windows bugs won't be surfaced. I'm curios as to whether they support NX, ASLR, or 64 bit? Even if they don't copy the system bug for bug they may be trivially exploitable just because they don't have the resources to harden it.
- Pi_User5 11y agoReactOS is free and open source and is released under the GPL license so anyone can see the source code.
- sudioStudio64 11y agoOpen source only makes bugs shallow if lots of people are using the software and reviewing the code. OpenSSL is a great example of code that lots of people ended up using but not reviewing that had/has many issues. I'm not saying anything negative about open source...I'm just saying that its more complex than just having code available.
- airza 11y agoyeah, i mentally multiply "Rewriting a project" times "reverse engineering is hard" and see a lot of exploitable material probably lurking somewhere in there...
- dschiptsov 11y agoSomeone should explain to them that open source software without being actively developed by a global community of high skilled enthusiasts (doing it for their own use) is doomed to lag, stagnate and die. Even a Linux distribution will lag and stagnate without active community. So many did. It just a law of big numbers. Even Solaris forks are effectively dead - who would write all the drivers for all these new chipsets? Long time ago Russian military had a brilliant idea to maintain their own Linux - it was an epic failure. And always will be.
- jeditobe 11y agoReactOS has a plenty of drivers and programs, because the idea of ReactOS is to be 100% compatible with windows 2003+
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- dschiptsov 11y agoAny 10gb Ethernets? SAS controllers? Latest server chipsets? Support of NUMA architectures?
- valgog 11y agoInstead of stopping occupation of 3 neighbour nation territories and supporting war machine, they are "freeing" the software. Of cause it is a window of opportunity for the software integrators. But it is bloody money they are getting. (Did not want to be political, but it is a political news article)
- finnjohnsen2 11y ago"Russian government" and "freedom effort" in the same sentence. Screenshot, print, frame, hang on wall.
- _yosefk 11y agoHang it near the screenshot of Edward Snowden getting political asylum in Russia.
- kaufland 11y agoSnowden's status in Russia is more that of a pet, or a trophy -- up for trade at any moment, for a high enough price -- than that of a political refugee. And he knows it, which is why he's trying to GTHO of there (even at the price of a reasonably short prison sentence in the U.S.).
- _yosefk 11y agoI was joking (could I say deadpanning?), the serious part being that Snowden showed a need for freedom from US-made software (regardless of citizens' freedoms), and that the rest of the world tries hard to look so bad that it makes Russia look better than it deserves.
- adventured 11y agoI wonder what Russia would have done to him, had he been a Russian citizen leaking / revealing vast amounts of their classified information. Pretty obvious what would have happened, and it's also obvious why Russia gave him asylum. There's a reason Snowden would leave Russia at the earliest possibility.
- k-mcgrady 11y agoThey would have done the same as the US.
- adventured 11y ago
- andrewshatnyy 11y agoThis is just another money laundering scheme for Russian Officials. It's the same thing as GLONAS or Russian iPhone alternative. It will take long time, ton of resources and will not work.
- baldfat 11y agoReactOS has been in alpha for 17 years! Don't see how this is a money laundering scheme. Heck they just did a indiegogo campaign.
- andrewshatnyy 11y agoNow when Минсвязи (Ministry of Communications) of Russia is interested it is a scheme.
- alexi5 11y agoSupport for the project by Russian Federation state is an important impellent to release a working package of that open source OS which is with no tight license. (If we would speak about a tight license - it makes (would make) useless crap from a project.) And about the criticism to state support : if there will be no ROS, people will have either to use Windows itself, or Linux+Wine. Would that limitation be better ? And that is not the first place - that is the second place for support to a client/server OS project (the first place was given to some Linux project http://www.opennet.ru/opennews/art.shtml?num=42406 http://www.opennet.ru/opennews/art.shtml?num=42406 ).