Re: Reaction project announcement

Now I like this one. I seriously would love to see ReactOS be successful,
and I'm no developer, but I can say that if we want this to be successful,
then we need to take the winning features from the best of both worlds.
Windows has the flexibility and user-friendliness, and Linux is free. So,
put them together and you have the winning combination right?
On Tue, Sep 29, 2009 at 7:37 AM, Chris Monahan <
[email protected]> wrote:

> ReactOS Mailing List
>
> I'm not a developer, i'm just a follower of the community and enthusiast
> but allow me to outline why the decision to not include components that do
> not add to the compatibility with the Win32 platform is more than simple
> politics.
>
> The way windows works is that it provides a solid OS that has the neccesary
> API's to accomodate a healthy ecosystem of third-party software. It also
> bends over backwards to enable such third party software to work. I feel
> that this emphasis on third party packages and maintaining this ecosystem is
> possibly the most important of Windows principles. This is not a principle
> of Linux, or rather the third party software ecosystem only really exists on
> a source code level. (I'm not counting community repositories as 'third
> party' I mean there are pretty much no packages that you can just download,
> install and run on any given linux flavour and version.)
>
> That's just the way it works there; arguably it's more secure for Linux,
> but it lacks in many ways the flexibility of Windows. For example I cannot
> install the latest firefox or OpenOffice in ubuntu without potentially
> breaking something - instead I wait for the next release of ubuntu.
>
> ReactOS attempts to provides a synthesis of the opensource values of Linux
> and this software flexibility of Windows.
>
> There is a tension, however, when you look at the bigger picture. Microsoft
> is a principle developer for it's own platform, and will often bundle things
> in an 'integrated' manner within the OS. This, in a sense, defies the
> third-party philosophy that should be inherent with the platform. This may
> be less of a problem these days as developers and users are more aware, but
> it's still an issue.
>
> ReactOS, it seems, attempts to get rid of this tension by harshly pushing
> back the line between OS and third-party software - no bundling of anything
> that isn''t neccesary to maintain that third-party ecosystem. This is not a
> bad thing as it allows this software flexibility to show its strength, but
> many who are used to the feature set of linux distros and editions of
> Windows are confused. It must be noted that just because ReactOS won't come
> with Python, or a media player, or a browser etc does not mean that they
> will not be available. Because of the software flexibility inherent in the
> platform, it will be a simple matter of downloading a package and running
> it.
>
> There's also nothing that anyone can, or should, do to stop people
> distributing versions with software packages bundled or 'integrated' a la
> the Reaction project. It has been said in the past that such 'distros' would
> compromise reactos, creating a nightmare of mutually incompatible systems
> like we see in the Linux world. I counter that the nature of the platform is
> such that those that break compatibiltiy will neccesarily die out, and to
> restrict or condemn third party distros would in fact be damaging to the
> strength of a platform with such emphasis on third party software.
>
> The decision to keep ReactOS pure has more to it than simple politics. It
> is a principled commitment to the purity of the platform. It, of course,
> could be associated with the childish anti-linux stance adopted by a
> minority of ReactOS community members, but they do not speak for the project
> as a whole and they should largely be ignored in favour of relevent
> criticisms and judgements about the roles of each platform.
>
> Chris Monahan
>
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