[PLUG] WINE verses ReactOS...

[Michael Robinson]

Which ultimately is the better approach to producing a free way 
to use that can't live without it Windows program?

ReactOS right now is at least 2 months behind optimal schedule for
0.3.11 with 0.5.0 who knows how far away.  Asking about ReactOS
0.3.11 on the forum boards, I'm not the only one who has, is
problematic.  The themes: the developers are few, they
don't have much time to work on ReactOS, and writing a Windows
compatible OS is hard seem to repeat over and over again.  I
wonder if it is indeed too hard to write a Windows NT 
compatible OS?  Is 5 years a reasonable length of time to
wait for a stable release of ReactOS?  Will ReactOS support
more Windows software and Windows drivers than Linux+WINE?

I've tried to argue that it would be easier to work on Linux
than ReactOS, but that gets shot down a lot on the forums.  
The latest complaint is that NetZero dial-up doesn't work 
well with Linux and there was a vague complaint about 
winmodems not working in Linux.  I used wvdial to connect a 
Linux network to dial-up once upon a time, worked flawlessly.

ReactOS is not Windows, but the people who argue in favor of it
act like it is.  I'm sure that a lot of Windows software won't
work in ReactOS 2-3 years from now.

On the subject of Windows alternatives, is anyone interested in
helping the opentaxsolver project support Oregon taxes?
http://opentaxsolver.sourceforge.net/
It would be nice if there was an alternative to H&R Block TaxCut
and Intuit's TurboTax that is Linux compatible.  I asked about
Oregon and they asked me to do the state.  I don't think I can
figure out Oregon taxes for the project.