ReactOS has just released version 0.3.0 RC2 of their open source Microsoft Windows-compatible operating system. They are also now 94% finished with the code audit.
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Member since:2006-02-20
Did you miss an emoticon, or did you mean to suggest something so blatantly absurd?
If I understand it, you are suggesting that Microsoft - with an installed base of a gazillion corporate customers largely demanding backwards compatibility - would see this amateur effort as a threat and react by breaking the compatibility their customers demand?
Jeez.
I wish these guys well, but it has to be seen as 'because they can'. Or at least 'because they can try'.
Will anyone ever use it to run SQLServer or Exchange? Will it ever be supported to run the JVM or .net CLR? Will it ever run the latest games?
I don't think so. Microsoft will, surely, evolve Windows and continue to pile on more and more bloat, but that's not driven by a need to differentiate from Reactos.
What it *is* driven by is hard to tell. Remember when Windows was a treadmill of frequent service packs and the customers said 'slow down'? Now we have extended periods of moribund stability and the press are howling because Vista isn't out. I'm not sure corporate IT departments have quite the same agenda, though.
James
Member since:2005-07-06
Did you miss an emoticon, or did you mean to suggest something so blatantly absurd?
If I understand it, you are suggesting that Microsoft - with an installed base of a gazillion corporate customers largely demanding backwards compatibility - would see this amateur effort as a threat and react by breaking the compatibility their customers demand?
Jeez.
Not like they haven't done it before. Here's how it works :
- MS implements new undocumented API.
- roll out in a fix or service pack
- older parts of API start making calls to new part in some obscure cases causing strange unpredictable errors in emulation software.
- emulation layers are deemed "unpredictable" and "faulty"
Result : competitors are hindered and everything still works on Windows.
Member since:
2005-09-28
Or start altering Windows so that it's incompatible with this. A lot of people felt that the Win32s (32bit extensions for old 16 bit Windows) implimentation was changed simply so that it wouldn't work under OS/2 anymore.