As was to be expected, the Longhorn Reloaded team has been shut down by Microsoft. “It is with sad news that I have to inform you that today due to a cesit and decist letter we recived from Microsoft we are no longer able to provide you with a download link to Longhorn Reloaded. It deeply saddens me that although Microsoft hknew about this project for many months they only issued us with this notice a few days after we started to distribute the iso via torrents and ftp server.”
Technically, a cease and desist letter has no legal force, and is only a curtosy… but, oh well. Then again, this move wasn’t exactly unexpected: you can’t give away commercial products for free.
I wonder what they’re going to do now? I can see ReactOS getting a number of new developers with experience in Windows hacking, and all sorts of projects can use people who have experience writing Windows drivers…
EDIT: Also, by ‘hknew’, I think you meant to type ‘have known’…
Edited 2007-06-25 23:04
Personally, I’d prefer to see ReactOS come to fruition instead of something like “Longhorn Reloaded”. A clean-room open source OS that is binary-compatible with its commercial OS inspiration is legal (as long as they don’t infringe trademarks). An unlicensed continuation of said commercial OS, regardless of the fact that the original OS is a dead project, will at best get you in civil court, and be hard as hell to do anyway without tedious reverse-engineering of closed-source binaries. I’m sure the challenge was part of the draw to the project, but as you said, I’d love to see some of these guys take that initiative and knowledge to other needy projects.
It is for this same reason (among others) that I am very excited about HaikuOS. I have played with it off and on since they started releasing vmware images, and so far it’s looking great. Between ReactOS, the BSDs, GNU/Linux and Haiku, I’ll have an open-source or free OS for just about any conceived need.
“A clean-room open source OS that is binary-compatible with its commercial OS inspiration is legal (as long as they don’t infringe trademarks)”
Is that so? Everbody’s always talking about how using Mono (a clean room implementation of .NET) will make MS sue you. Why would that not happen when people use ReactOS?
All these guys did was edit a few resource files to put “LONG HORN IS RELOADED GUYS” all over Explorer.
I saw no functional improvement, nothing. It was a few nostalgic people with big ideas and small skills.
All these guys did was edit a few resource files to put “LONG HORN IS RELOADED GUYS” all over Explorer.
I saw no functional improvement, nothing. It was a few nostalgic people with big ideas and small skills.
Exactly, I didn’t get the point. It didn’t appear that they did much of anything. My guess is this project would have disappeared on its own, regardless of what MS did. What were they going to do with a piece of closed-source, beta-quality software???
I don’t think the ReactOS devs would want anyone who has actually sseen Microsoft code to work on the project. There can’t be any Microsoft code found in Reactos and the recent code audit was done just to ensure that there was none.
…what did they expect?
To be hired by MS, maybe. Or maybe they thought “abandonware” was safe. I wonder whether they ever heard about open source. They seem well-meaning, just totally clueless as to what kind of world they live in.
Welcome to Wonderland, Alice
A very good question.
This quote is amusing:
Interesting way to affect victimization… I’m guessing they’re implying that Microsoft should have sent the cease-and-desist *sooner*?
Edited 2007-06-26 04:40
Maybe he would have been happier if they had sued him?
That’s so true. They should have expected it.
And I’m sure Microsoft would be more than glad to give it to them, for a small bit of legal wrangling that the Longhorn Reloaded people can’t possibly win.
I won’t mention any words as to what would be on this award, but think along the lines of a Techno Darwin award for what it takes to earn it.
I agree with Morgan above: they’d be far better off expending their time and resources on something that will actually matter and be useful to someone, something that won’t get them dragged into court if they can’t see the logic and correctness in not attempting to work with stuff they have no rights to use,.
Priceless 🙂
Man, what happened to all the fun in the world .. has MS sucked the world dry of just having fun … yeah .. its probably a bit illegal the guys making a better Longhorn than MS but i bet they had a bit of fun trying … good on them thats what i say hacking for hackings sake .. if only they had not distributed the bounty they probably could have had all the fun in the world …
Too bad they didn’t invest their time in open-source software…
Well, I guess they didn’t want to?
Anyway, if they realize this sort of thing doesn’t work, I think chances are a few developers will shift to an OSS project that tries to meet a similar end (ReactOS or WINE)
For all we know, several developers DO code for OSS, or have before…
I’m not sure if it’s funny or sad to see the people who are surprized and “outraged” that Microsoft shut them down. Are people really that naive that they would believe that Microsoft would turn a blind eye towards blatant piracy of Windows? Who cares if it was a beta, it’s still theirs.
I can’t believe people are siding with “Longhorn Reloaded” and blasting Microsoft over this.
“It deeply saddens me that although Microsoft hknew about this project for many months they only issued us with this notice a few days after we started to distribute the iso via torrents and ftp server.”
Well, that *might* just be because it wasn’t an actual copyright violation until then.
Seriously, how could this possibly be a surprise to anyone?
Today cooperations buy laws trademark laws, new copyright laws i dont defend them and refuse to subdue to any of them .
The customer is treated like a criminal is that the gratitude for bying a product you pay MS to betatest?
you get a new OS thats incompatible with anything and
you have to rent or crack it to make it work.
But still when you move on to some company they have to use liscensed stuff for each computer one os for all pcs is not enough , if u get an os its logical to do whatever you want with it if you evolve it with better codebase it becomes another product .
These laws prevented Ultima IV Dawn of virtue to be released , the guy had it ready n i wanted to play it.
Now they kill of an intresting OS that could probably evolve into a stable and nice OS.
The laws never create new oppurtunities for people i say as the Pirate that i am it’s time to Demand it. However they could just make a distro of Reactos and continue with longhorn reloaded over the reactos codebase ofcause that would mean a better UI than the crappy ROS bloat hybrid between win98 and win3.11 explorer without webbyness and overactive desktop as longhorn was intended to be.
“Today cooperations buy laws trademark laws, new copyright laws i dont defend them and refuse to subdue to any of them .”
This has NOTHING to do with “new copyright laws”. It’s the same old copyright laws that prevents you from buying a book, make copies of it and sell them.
“if u get an os its logical to do whatever you want with it if you evolve it with better codebase it becomes another product . ”
You CAN do whatever you want with it. The thing you cant do is redistribute it with (or without) the changes you’ve made.
This is not rocket science people, stop acting like MS is the big bad boogie man here.
“Now they kill of an intresting OS that could probably evolve into a stable and nice OS. ”
Only if by “stable and nice” you mean “superficial changes someone made to the product that MS spent a load of money creating”.
In this day and age of the DMCA, the end user is a criminal, nine times out of ten. It’s a bit sad, but true. Technically, since I watch DVD’s on my linux computer, I’m a criminal. Ah, C’est la vie.
Ok, I’ve a few points to make. First, if by ‘one os’ you mean one copy, you’re right. It’s not. And since Microsoft created the OS in question, they legally can say you had to smear yourself with mud and dance half naked in the streets of Baghdad for each copy of the OS you install. It’s their product, you don’t have to buy it if you don’t like the terms.
Secondly, it is logical to take an OS and evolve it. However, when you do that it becomes a ‘derivative work’. In plain English it means no matter what changes you make to it, it’s still based off something else, and hence, you need to make sure it’s ok with the guys who first wrote it before showing people the work you did to it. Thankfully there’s wonderful Open Source OSes that are quite willing to let you do just this. It’s a shame Microsoft isn’t as open to it as we would like, but really… did you expect them to be? I didn’t.
This is what I really wanted to comment on. I venture to say that what you claim is impossible. ReactOS has been trying to do what would need to be done to achieve what you claim for years… and they’re still working on it. You see, without the source code, there is _no way_ to make improvements to Longhorn. Ok, this isn’t entirely true, but to do it would have been so mind blowingly painful that progress would be slow. And in two years… who’s really going to want Longhorn? Heck Vista’s hardly 6 months old and no one wants it anymore…
I’m really confused here. IF they went with ReactOS, they would first need to work on ReactOS enough that they could solve the remaining issues with ReactOS. (Like increasing compatibility. Then they could work on shining up the GUI. Since ReactOS was written from the ground up, and is based on the much slimmer, more utilitarian win98/2k GUI… what bloat are you talking about?
Just wanted to remind that contract violation is not a crime (it just nullifies the contract).
Additionally playing DVDs on linux is also not a crime. There are already “licensed” alternatives, and DeCSS is no longer a trade secret [ http://www.eff.org/IP/Video/DVDCCA_case/20040122_eff_pr.php ], too.
Finally this has nothing to do with the EULAs, people just “can’t” redistribute others’ programs even if they “fix” them (without permission of course).
Edited 2007-06-26 04:09
It isn’t subject to criminal law, but under civil law, you can be sued for breach of contract. Don’t think you can just breach any old contract and get away with it, you will most likely be penalised. In fact, penalties for breach of contract can run into the billions of dollars, and if you don’t or can’t pay, you may wind up in prison. Breach of contract is not a trivial thing – contracts, whether verbal or long formal documents, are the glue that holds society together, and the law does not treat those who breach contracts lightly.
Exactly. I am sick of people excusing piracy in all forms as a kind of “breach of contract” as if the phrase “breach of contract” makes it all okay.
Breaching a contract is serious stuff. I’m currently governed by a few contracts, one of them is my tenancy agreement. In it, there is a clause that says I cannot sublet. Of course, I could sublet seeing as there is no law against subletting but then I would be going against the contract I agreed to when I moved in. That means that a) my landlord can kick me out b) he can demand I stop subletting c) haul my sorry butt to court if I fail to comply with his demands.
Contracts are serious stuff. Never ever trivialize a contract and be wary of any contract you bind yourself to.
Of course breaching a contract is serious. However it’s still not criminal.
For example, if I were to steal (in the real sense) I’d be in prison according to many countries’ laws even if the owner of the property “pardoned” me. A crime is still a crime wether there’s complaint or not.
On the other hand, I can always try to talk to the other parties in the contract in case of a breach. A new agreement would be the likely outcome. This can also apply to your example (i.e: a higher rent or new terms).
To summarize: You’re right, breaching a contract is serious, neverthless we should not confuse it with a crime.
Edited 2007-06-26 11:44
You seem a bit confused. No one is excusing piracy as a form of breach of contract. Piracy (i.e. violation of copyright) *is* a crime, while breaching a contract is *not* a crime – though you can get sued if you do.
BTW, some contracts are illegal, i.e. they ask for conditions that contravene the law (i.e. a tenancy agreement that would only let you caucasian roommates). You wouldn’t get sued for breaching such a contract. That said, you *should* always have a lawyer look at a contract before you sign it, as you can find yourself at a serious disadvantage if you don’t.
This is also different from EULAs. Most EULAs wouldn’t stand the test of the courts, because the conditions they impose go against elements of contract law in many jurisdictions. Not that this is relevant to the current topic, as the cease-and-desist letter concerned a violation of copyright (redistributing the beta without consent), *not* a breach of the EULA.
This is all well and good, but one important notice, everyone:
An EULA is NOT a contract. A copyright licence, including the GPL, is NOT a contract.
Clicking the “accept” button has ZERO legal value. The licence only informs you of what you can legally do. In case of doubt, you can do, pretty much, NOTHING.
From the GPL-v2 text:
“5. You are not required to accept this License, since you have not signed it. However, nothing else grants you permission to modify or distribute the Program or its derivative works. These actions are prohibited by law if you do not accept this License. Therefore, by modifying or distributing the Program (or any work based on the Program), you indicate your acceptance of this License to do so, and all its terms and conditions for copying, distributing or modifying the Program or works based on it.”
Read more from Groklaw:
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20031214210634851&query=li…
BTW, the entry for “EULA” in Wikipedia seems to imply otherwise, but I think Groklaw and Eben Moglen, the Free Software Foundation’s attorney are better sources.
The bloat i mentioned goes to the reactos resource department in their intepretation of the Explorer shell , from the beginning it was 200 kb , when you with reshacker strip xp explorer.exe of the never used resources like bitmaps and icons you get around 320 kb , strip resources from shell32.dll 3.00 mb i know i’ve done it and it increases performance since it loads smaller files, i basically removed all 48×48 icons, left only 16×16 and 32×32 intact, placed 1 byte dummy icons for never used icons and for the ones that i use i have 256 colours , also i removed the overactive desktop functionality and use k-meleon only. however the 1 mb explorer.exe in reactos looks like bloat to me, no matter how much you reshack it it will stay big and messy, windows xp gui is incompatible with reactos, and yeah its slow dont get me wrong but reactos shell32.dll on install never does a cleanup on languages it takes up all possible languages stored inside (that too takes space and eats memory).
The version for “optional” overactive desktop is like deleting mshtml.dll from winntsystem32 folder not more.
Thats why a new distro need to be made , one with logical GUI without Active Desktop spyware feast, and after that focus on compatibility /network/drivers/ntfs support.
Not first build the bloat and after that the importain things.
But making a gui that is compatible with the xp/2003/win2000 gui would be nice , preferably to behave like an nt4 gui since the nt4 gui was quite decent before all patches, if they want graphical extras sure but make em not so integrated so they can be easily toasted .
smss.exe,lsass.exe are but examples there should be a way with command line to reboot too if people run advanced to test the os speed.
Come on dont we want reactos to surpass Windows?
Winlogon doesn’t even need to be running same with RPC
(kill that and no taskbar bug after restart on xp)
Then we have the svchost instances only 1 needed, for sound (if your a gamer) come on how does miranda Im beat ICQ and Msn? it aint memoryhungry
Personally i encourage Reactos project i just would like more innovation in saving system resources instead of adding more fat and whats up with the wine based shell32?
Also a good idea would be to do like in win95 days easily unmark the stuff that wont be installed so everybody gets happy and i dont get “dont you know how dirt cheap ram is?” comments cause a good os that use very little system resources but is compatible with the systems makes excellent gaming os.
Thats why i would encourage a stand alone continuation of reactos project like Longhorn reloaded , they can rename it anything like for example Devilhorn to avoid ms attention
In the days of terrabyte hard drives, do you really think a few hundred kilobytes here or there is bloat?
Even if it was 10Mb, on a modern computer, that is far from bloat. OK, if you are still using a 486 with 16Mb of RAM, you might have problems, but on a typical 2007 PC, a 1Mb executable is trivially small (i.e., not bloat).
Tell that to the space i take up on my 200 gb hd my windows takes up 350 mb and thats alot i would shrink it more if i didnt lost too much functionality by downloading stuff its good to have spare space .
Also dont forget That you are speaking of mechanical hard drives that by that space would make the pc incredibly slow unlike some futuristic entirely flashbased 1000 terrabyte hardcards.
Or to answer that question with another one just as smart.
Do you think it matters to drive with primitive industrial revolution cars with combustion engines driven by oil and gas when: ITS THE FUTURE! we could power up our 100% electronic cars and recharge them at every parking lot
Why invent a cure for canser when we could use nanorobots to search and destroy?
Seriously my PC performance sinks a bit with something that eats 10 mb . And it takes only skype to kill my laptop (cause of harddrive probably)
Edited 2007-06-26 06:49
350Mb out of 200Gb is utterly insignificant (less than 0.2% in fact). Sure, a bit of headroom is always a good idea, but it is always a better (for various reasons)to keep your data and your software on separate drives anyway, in which case you are likely to have several tens of gigabytes free on your system drive (assuming it is a 200GB drive as you stated) – plenty of headroom to play with. If a 10Mb program or Skype is causing your performance to suffer, perhaps you need to invest in a more modern computer (or if your computer is already pretty recent, then something must be seriously wrong with it). I can have multiple applications (including Skype) running at once, each taking up between 15 – 200Mb of RAM with no noticeable drop in performance, and that is on an old and decrepit 2.6GHz PIV with 1GB of RAM.
Your problem is not bloat, it is using a crappy computer.
I do not know if you’re being sarcastic when you label your questions as “smart”. You either fail at sarcasm, or have a really really perverse mind.
Edited 2007-06-26 09:31
Since it’s still alpha grade software, perhaps they are not stripping the debug symbols from their binaries so that they can get useful stack traces and so on.
Just a thought…
Edited 2007-06-26 08:15
If you run gpedit.msc and root around, you’ll find a way to switch the shell back to classic mode.
That is one of the strangest, most misguied arguments I heard in a while.
They are simply stopping people from redistributing their copyrighted property, using laws that are older than Microsoft. This is really no differnt that me making changes updating the quality of the theatrical versions of Star Wars because I don’t like the special editions, and then being upset when Lucas stopped me from distributing it.
The customer is treated like a criminal is that the gratitude for bying a product you pay MS to betatest? you get a new OS thats incompatible with anything and
you have to rent or crack it to make it work.”
Well, very good for Microsoft, I would say.
You bought the Beta, tested it, and now it is crap. That is exactly what the EULA to which you agreed said.
If you don’t want to be treated like this, don’t buy it. You have absolutely no right to demand something from anyone. If you don’t like one operating system or the company which makes it, or the license it comes with, well, choose a worthier one. There are operating systems of all shapes, sizes and licenses to choose from. And lots of them are fun hacking for!
“In this day and age of the DMCA, the end user is a criminal, nine times out of ten. It’s a bit sad, but true. Technically, since I watch DVD’s on my linux computer, I’m a criminal. Ah, C’est la vie.”
libdvdcss plusungood linux doubleplusungood DMCA bashing crimespeak BB is watching you
😉
Corporations?
over the reactos codebase ofcause that would mean a better UI than the crappy ROS bloat hybrid between win98 and win3.11 explorer
If you’ve never seen ReactOS in action, just tell us that and we don’t have to sit through miles of incoherence.
i never said reactos doesnt work well , i talk about the UI functionality and the mindless active desktop implentation also the bad cleanup on it lots of webyness stays there , the Reactos in itself as an OS that Runs stuff works pretty well i just mentioned that the GUI should be made better first since it turns into ram-munching bloat.
This is exactly one of the many reasons to reject non-Free software altogether and invest money into the development of Free software. With Free software, not only do you have the right to use the software as any way you wish, you also have the right to go to any software developer and have them change the program to fit YOUR requirements; there is absolutely no need to be dependant upon the author of the software.
“You also have the right to go to any software developer and have them change the program to fit YOUR requirements”
I seriously doubt that, if I developed an opensource program, and you came to me and started to demand changes, I might consider it if it was worthwhile, but I also might tell you to take a hike. That’s the right of the developer. The power of OSS is the legal right to modify applications YOURSELF to fit your needs, and with the GPL and similar liscenses, you have to make those changes available to the public. You have no rights to demand anything. The right you have, is to change it yourself, or find some other app that suits your needs better.
“You also have the right to go to any software developer and have them change the program to fit YOUR requirements”
I think the main point he was making was that he could go to *anyone* skilled enough to make these changes …not specifically the original author of the software…
“you also have the right to go to any software developer and have them change the program to fit YOUR requirements”
You also have the same right with proprietary software, you can ask them to change it to fit your needs.
However, neither the company making the proprietary software nor the OSS developer is required to actually implement the change you want.
If you told me to make some change to one of my OSS programs and I didn’t like that change I would, quite frankly, tell you to shut up or do it yourself. And even if you did do it yourself and sent me some diff’s I would be under no obligation to add your changes.
Edited 2007-06-26 04:08
I wouldn’t be shocked when the big mega corporation threatens to bust your balls for playing with their cash cow.
These guys shouldn’t be surprised or sad, it was obviously going to happen sooner or later.
Seriously guys, if you want to build something on top of an OS, make sure that your foundation is based on open source and not a proprietary product made by a paranoid, trigger-happy company like Microsoft. In my book, you have only yourselves to blame for not realizing that this would happen soner or later, and you have only yourselves to blame for wasting your time.
So A for effort, F for priorities.
“It deeply saddens me that although Microsoft hknew about this project for many months they only issued us with this notice a few days after we started to distribute the iso via torrents and ftp server”
^
^
They allowed you (developers) to continue development and then stopped you from distributing it because they want to know what you folks can do new in there OS so that they can include those features in there upcoming version of Windows. lols…
Re-distributing binaries of Microsoft products is certainly not a good idea. But how did the get the idea that it might just work out in the first place? With Microsoft? A well, that’s Windows fanboys for you.
I hope they will learn a bit from that.
Of course that could happen. But I think you didn’t understand my message (or the message of Free software): the user is free to go to *ANY* software developer to get changes made to Free software. Without this freedom, the user becomes dependant upon the author(s) of the software as the user requires the author’s permission to get the changes happening. This dependence is bad for the user because if the author is unwilling or unable to fulfill the user’s request, the two standard outcomes are: 1) the user is completely helpless and has to make do with inferior software or 2)the user chooses a functionally superior non-Free software and so continues the cycle of dependency and subjugation.
If you didn’t want to invest time and effort to change your software at the user’s request (assuming the software is Free software) the user will always have the liberty to go hire a software developer that will.
Edited 2007-06-26 07:28
“the user is free to go to *ANY* software developer to get changes made to Free software.”
Oh right. Duh.
However, technically you can do the same with proprietary software only it is much harder to change and you cant distribute the result (although you can distribute the changes by themselves).
Which brings us to this story. A bunch of people wanted some better software but were deprived of their right to improve their own situations. These people wanted some improvements made to some non-Free software (Windows Longhorn in this case). They had to do this the hard way as they were not given access to the code. They modified Longhorn despite the fact that MS disapproves of these actions as stated in the EULA. These people did not have freedom 1 of Free software. When these people tried to distribute their changes, they got a cease and desist notice. These people did not have freedoms 2 and 3 of Free software.
What point is there in modifying software for the benefit of general users if literally noone is allowed to benefit from the modifications? Non-Free software is literally retarding society’s natural tendency to advance by retarding the evolution of shared knowledge.
“A bunch of people wanted some better software but were deprived of their right to improve their own situations.”
Not at all. Nothing is stopping them from improving their own situation. What they cant do is distribute the improved end-product. They weren’t deprived on of any rights.
“They modified Longhorn despite the fact that MS disapproves of these actions as stated in the EULA.”
What the EULA says doesn’t matter. They can modify their own copy as much as they like.
“What point is there in modifying software for the benefit of general users if literally noone is allowed to benefit from the modifications?”
“Non-Free software is literally retarding society’s natural tendency to advance by retarding the evolution of shared knowledge”
Except that nothing is stopping you from sharing the knowledge you gained from modifying your own copy of, say, Longhorn. Copyright law does not concern itself with what you have learned, only that you don’t (re)distribute others works without permission.
Edited 2007-06-26 08:55
Nothing MS has done has been any surprise to anyone on here (hell, we even predicted exactly this when the 1st LR article was posted on here).
What genuinely does surprise me is how the LR team expected anything more positive to come of this – maybe they had a hidden agenda and were angling for a job at MS?
[edit] excuse the subject title – cant edit that
Edited 2007-06-26 10:06
Good points, but I guess my argument now is now a matter of the feasibility of obfuscated code comprehension i.e. code that is not in source code form. How feasible is it to understand a whole system of obfuscated code that comprises a program? In my opinion, it is infeasible for most programmers to comprehend and understand the operation of a whole system of obfuscated code; maybe parts here and there but not a whole system. The amount of investment required to comprehend non-trivial quantities of obfuscated code is too much for the majority of developers to burden; it is pretty much a non-option in the majority of cases. This method of obtaining information from is also infeasible for the long-term as too much effort is wasted trying to understand the logic of the system.
Sure it is possible to learn from obfuscated non-Free code and then share the knowledge with others but we shouldn’t have to accept this as a legitimate method for sharing information; more like a last chance effort to interoperate. This is the reason why it is infeasible for the user to improve their situation relating to one or more non-Free programs.
Duh is all i have to say. The people working on this should have known they would get a letter telling them to stop. Windows is not an open source project, modifying it not allowed, if you do you COULD get sued. Theres some fear uncertainty and doubt. use windows in a way microsoft doesn’t want, and get sued.
you know what, these developers would have had better luck if they had just started with linux, cause then they wont get told to stop, and no one can shut them down.
Edited 2007-06-26 12:57
They could modify it all they want for their personal use, but they can’t redistribute the modified code.
They could have posted instructions on how to modify it along with tools to simplify the process, and that would have been legal.
That’s probably what they should have done. As it was, it was interested to see how far they could hack Windows.
Althought people have already mention this: What did they expect? Ohwell, good they are dead, lets just hope they are intelligent enough to not carry one, which they doesn’t seem to be.
That’s a joke but there is reality in it.
Microsoft has been fighting intense resistance to Vista. They’ve gone from strong-arming and taking WinXP off the market to rescinding their decree on virtualisation in the wake of poor sales past the initial surge of fanatics.
It may be obvious to all of us that it such a project as Longhorn Reloaded would go away quickly, but they probably thought that they were doing Microsoft a favour and that it would be embraced.