Some days you just have to shake your head and wonder. As it turns out, I'm a
little late to hear about this, but nonetheless, I'm still shaking my head.
It turns out that Windows has gone open source. And (!!) it's not being made by Microsoft
anymore. Well, Windows™ is still made by Microsoft. Windows is now made by a group
under the gise of ReactOS.
ReactOS® is a free, modern operating system
based on the design of Windows® XP/2003. Written completely from scratch, it aims
to follow the Windows® architecture designed by Microsoft from the hardware level
right through to the application level. This is not a Linux based system, and shares
none of the unix architecture.
So essentially, these people are taking
the Windows architecture (based on XP/2003), and redesigning it from scratch. Or rather,
are re-coding it from scratch, because redesigning would imply making something different.
Sounds vaguely familiar to, oh, something called Vista. Except uglier.
Now, that nagging feeling we are all getting right about now should be visualized
as a pack of rabid lawyers. Isn't this considered copyright infringement? They outright
define the product as a copy.
And what about the end users? Are all programs designed to run on Windows supposed
to be able to run on this ReactOS? Why bother with testing? The XP architecture is
now almost 8 years old by now. That means anything designed to run on Vista, or soon
to be designed to run on Windows 7, wouldn't stand a snowballs chance in hell, running
on ReactOS.
I would love to see how a .NET application runs on it.