[PLUG] ReactOS site down again...

Gregg Berkholtz gregg at berkholtz.net
Wed Jun 16 05:25:07 UTC 2010


Windows N...what? That sounds like a fun project; reverse-engineering and essentially re-inventing an existing although wholly-broken OS architecture. Whoohoo... How many anti-virus/spyware/malware/whatever vendors support that flavor?

I find you get what you focus on; they want to focus on a broken system by modeling a replacement after that...well guess what, nearly 15 years later and they're still stuck with alpha quality code that still lacks both 64-bit and NTFS support (even Linux has those!). Maybe the ReactOS developer(s?) should shift gears, considering Apple now surpasses M$ in market capitalization. Seriously - if they're so stuck on their glorious code, why not leave them to their toys - would you really want that mindset contributing to other projects anyway?

As for being banned from open source projects - I typically only see that when projects are rapidly losing developers & other forms of public support, and the banned individual disagrees with the remaining developers. Take, for example, SQL-Ledger; a project wholly-controlled by a single developer and whom bans anyone from "his" GPLed project that does not fall in line behind him. On the flip-side, a very strong "alternative" SQL-Ledger community has been evolving for years - so-much that the original developer doesn't even factor into the picture anymore. If ReactOS is kicking people out, then where's their alternative community? Maybe they're just looking for a corner to die in?

Pretty website, I wonder who their webmaster is.

Shouldn't this be on PLUG-TALK?

Oh yea, sent from a Mac, through a datacenter chock-full of highly-reliaable Linux systems, from a snarky guy who started when Netware 3.11 & DOS 6.22 were The Next Big Things(tm). The point; sure, Windows is kind of important in some environments, but it's nothing near the Big Deal it used to be - count the number of PCs vs Macs during your next coffee shop run, or start asking random people what their home computer runs (my money its predominately OSX, or a vendor-supplied Linux distro).

- Gregg
Solid IT Support & Hosting Since 1995: www.tocici.com
Small Parts Design & Machining: www.berkholtz.net

On Jun 14, 2010, at 12:44 AM, Michael C. Robinson wrote:

> I found an interview via WineHQ with a fellow who worked on ReactOS back
> in 2004.  No doubt, he really thought that 6 months would see ReactOS in
> much better shape than it is in even today.  The ReactOS community of
> today seems like a very angry community that is experiencing an ever
> lengthening timeline for getting something stable/quasi stable put
> together.
> 
> Perhaps it would be best to fix whatever problems remain in Linux and
> really push Linux instead.  For instance, does everyone need X Windows?
> I look at the philosophy behind Syllable and wonder if a simpler GUI 
> on top of Linux would be a more reasonable idea?
> 
> ReactOS, started in 1996, is still in alpha stage.  I think 0.3.11 was
> released 5-6 months ago.  The site is totally down right now according
> to openDNS.  Sometimes, the site seems to go down when a new release is
> pending.  ReactOS needs to be in beta, but who knows how far off that
> is.
> 
> When is a project, even an OSS project, not worth it?  Linux came
> together in what, four years time?  ReactOS is taking much longer 
> to come together.  With a third of all software projects being
> completed, maybe the ReactOS community should accept that their 
> project isn't one of those and either move on or hand the project 
> over to someone else.
> 
> Linux is very mature, although I have problems with my AGP HD 3450
> Radeon shutting off without warning and my system is oddly quite slow.
> I'm trying to play Runes of Avalon Book I which supposedly requires a
> 1.6 Ghz processor on a 3.06 Ghz P4 1.5 gigabytes of ram Fedora 12 system
> and it is still too slow.  I think it makes more sense to put pressure
> on AMD and the makers of NVIDIA video cards to help the open source
> community write better drivers for Linux than it does to try and clone
> Windows NT.  Especially now with Linux being taken more seriously by
> software producers, fixing Linux should be taken more seriously as well.
> 
> Anyways, how common is it for someone to be banned from communicating
> with the people working on an open source project?  Is ReactOS a dying
> project at this point or is there a realistic possibility of someone
> else taking on the project and doing something great with it?
> 
> Maybe Linux should be the server and something else should be the
> desktop system, but is the Windows NT environment really all that 
> great a choice for desktops?
> 
> Maybe if the ReactOS community didn't make the code available free of
> charge to the public, the GPL doesn't require this, programmers could
> be hired to work full time.
> 
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