OSNews

There is new info available on the status of the project in the form of a news release at the site. You may find it interesting and possibly reassuring.

http://www.reactos.org/xhtml/en/news_page_14.html

If the problem is tainting, well, I think they could just rewrite the offending parts. Just like BSD did.

I also hope they reopen the project soon.

"In the
meantime we are filtering email discussion on this matter because we
do not want rumor and hearsay to be spread."

Thanks Thom...

Yeah sure, blame it on me... As if I put that big notice on top of their front page. As if I took down their mailinglists when I tried to check the opinions of the people involved. As if I took down the forums when I tried to get the opinions of the ones involved [1].

Get real. They made a fcuk up, it's their fault, not mine.

Woah, you're being a little apprehensive Thom. I'm sure that wasn't directed at you personally. Anyway, this is just a bump in the road and I'm sure once they get everything straightened out they'll be right back to coding. They are just being very careful to cover they're asses.

Yeah sure, blame it on me... As if I put that big notice on top of their front page. As if I took down their mailinglists when I tried to check the opinions of the people involved. As if I took down the forums when I tried to get the opinions of the ones involved [1].

Get real. They made a fcuk up, it's their fault, not mine.

OK, that's fine, you're a journalist, that's your job/hobby/whatever. You aren't obliged to act for the good of a project.
Two more questions: what's their fault? How did they fcuk up? Have they stolen or reverse-engineered your code? Or did you sign a contract with them, or at least donated some money?
And what's the purpose of writing 'fcuk'? It's interesting to see an administrator working around bad language filters...

Two more questions: what's their fault? How did they fcuk up? Have they stolen or reverse-engineered your code? Or did you sign a contract with them, or at least donated some money?

They made an error in putting up big signs on their website, while on the other hand they say they didn't want this to get out-- and the only way to know this, was by reading their m-l... Which they took down. So how was I supposed to know? THAT is their error.

And what's the purpose of writing 'fcuk'? It's interesting to see an administrator working around bad language filters...

I'm not working around filters. I write it that way because that's they way I write it on my personal blog, IM, emails, etc. (for some odd reason), and as such it has become a habit.

There is nothing irresponsible in linking to the site and giving the news. Once it has been put up on the site, its in the public domain. The lesson for the team is, give enough information at the time of the announcement, on the site. What has been posted here about the 50 lines of code would have been fine.

They come out of it quite well in terms of managing the issue, but maybe could have handled the initial release of the information a bit better by being more specific. The other thing that usually helps is to have a date when you will release a further bulletin - and then always release that bulletin on that date, even if it is only to say, nothing more to report until x.

Anyway, I'm sure everyone wishes them well.

I definitely agree that if they didn't want people to spread rumors, they could have been less conspicuous.

What's funny, though, is Thom's reaction to two simple words. Do you flip out when people tell you to drive safely, or to have a good day?

Funny like eating-a-hippie funny.

I'M NOT FLIPPING OUT!!!!!

Certainly appears they found something pretty damning, or they wouldn't have gone public with the story, temporarily shuttered the project, and removed downloads. Needless to say they are concerned about their own actions and possible liability.

This speaks well for the integrity and honesty of the developers working on this project. Better to correct issues, before they become the target of lawsuits. They will be back.......

This has nothing to do with patents. It has to do with copyright.

Put DOWN the crack pipe. This has nothing at all to do with patents.

The breach was Kernel level, Wine is a lot higher on up, so No this should not affect Wine or Crossover. We should just let it blow over, not blow it up. The issue is more what constitutes correct reverse engineering and how to enforce ReactOS policy, if there weren't problems with some developers not getting along the issue would have long been resolved.

The code issue is minor, very very minor, it's the people issue that needs working out. At the moment I’d be more concerned about a NetBSD/OpenBSD type split then anything else.

Edited 2006-01-26 21:13

Guesswork? No, I'm on the mailing list (as a lurker) and have fallowed the project for more then 5 years. I do not guess, there are two camps right now one that condones the act, believing it to be a valid form of reverse engineering and another condemning the act, believing it to be wrong on multiple levels. The breach is small, that much was clear form the mailing list and if the offending developer can be believed (and at the moment I do believe him on this) he produced most of it before he disassembled the corresponding windows section.

The code in question is the fast call code, and the developer claims that part of it is form Linux. What I would be interested in code wise is a comparison of the ReactOS code with the Linux code, that would show a few things a) are they related as claimed by the developer and b) is there an alternative implementation. Neither have been proven before the discussion went of the mailing list. The problem is that the ReactOS developers don't have the expertise for this. The code is rather esoteric and in asm, So if anybody has the expertise here I would appreciate your opinion.

I claimed the issue to be more a people issue, and I stand by that. The testing coordinator left the project over this (or so it appears from timing and argumentation previously to leaving) the core and old ReactOS developers are all on the clean room track but the project did accumulate lots of people in the last year or so. All we can do about the people issue is let it blow over.

Know is an abstract idea (sorry you got me on my philosophical foot today) how do you know? Fact is the basis for knowledge (knowing) and how can fact exist for anything but the most basic of ideas. This is helium, that is iron. In anything more complicated personality and opinion figures in. Your hair looks like crap today, you have a nice car.
I will wait for a statement, but it won't change my state of knowing. If the person that supposedly caused the taint did his act out of ignorance and insists he did no wrong what is there to know? It's a people issue and it blows over, always. If you have a fight with another person you either get back together or not.

My fault. I read your as "you're."

"going off" = "going by" not you're going off = being deleted

Just ignore that last post

It's probably function call with some of arguments put in the CPU registers instead of stack.

Normally you enter the kernel by executing an INT. Newer (actually, non-ancient) processors have a special instruction, SYSENTER, which make the transition to kernelmode much faster. The "fastcall" stuff refers to the handling of this SYSENTER instructions.

MS did not release thier code to the average OSS programmer, they released to people willing/able to pay thier fees, and you know that won't be cheap.

Moving to wouldn't gain you much if your focus is to reproduce NT internals or the Win32 API, since OS/2 and NT diverged almost completely around 1992 (IBM wrote its own 32-bit OS/2 kernel, and NT was made more VMS-like by Cutler and associates when MS hired them from DEC).