This continues
Capitalism,
Communism and Computing and Lawyers and
software, that I
indeed put in
BitsAndPieces in
part to lead up to this
piece.
I have written about
RosAsm
before in
BitsAndPieces, and I
still like it very much,
for which reason I am
sad so very few people
are seriously interested
in it - but then that
also happens to be the
sad fate of many a
really good idea or
product, simply for
being too original, or
for being not what
ordinary folks like or
think proper or
desirable.
Also, I am subscribed
myself to the
RosAsm forum, for
which I wrote some few
pieces, and for that
reason got interested in
an item published there
today by Betov, RosAsm's
main developer, about
ReactOS and RosAsm.
First, what is
ReactOS? I
didn't know of it
myself, until
discovering RosAsm, and
then I learned two
things:
-
ReactOS is an Open
Source
Operating System,
that is meant to be
free and to replace or
compete with MS
Windows, by
providing a
similar API and
look-and-feel, but
then in Open Source,
and that has been
under development now
for some 10 years.
- Betov has been
working for 10 years
on
RosAsm and its predecessor
SpAsm to have a
good
assembler for
ReactOS - as indeed is
mentioned briefly in
B_U_Asm, which
is RosAsm's fine
helpfile.
So far, so good, for
it is in everybody's
interests - apart from
the shareholders and
owners of MS, of course
- that there comes to be
an Open Source
"Windows". (And I myself
don't mind
paying for this
- as long as it is
genuine and complete
Open Source.)
I have briefly looked
at ReactOS some months
ago, and found it
interesting, but of very
doubtful chances of ever
becoming a real
alternative for MS
Windows, and that
basically for legal
reasons, and not the
quality of the software,
for that is good (if not
yet up to full MS
Windows standards).
Today, Betov gave up
ReactOS and wrote a
piece about it
explaining why:
http://betov.free.fr/ReactOS.html.
This must have been a
bitter thing to write,
if you have been working
for 10 years without
monetary remuneration on
the assumption that your
assembler will
eventually be a part of
a good Open Source
Operating System.
Betov's reason to
give up ReactOS is
mostly that it seems to
him ReactOS uses code
that has been
disassembled - or so it
would seem, and not only
to Betov, but to one of
the main developers of
ReactOS,
Hartmut Birr,
who left it for that
reason - which means, if
indeed this is true or
can be made plausible in
court (!), that there is
very little chance for
ReactOS to become what
it set out to be, since
MS can shoot it down in
the courts very easily.
I have checked the
links Betov provided and
he seems right to me,
except perhaps for the -
highly speculative -
outcome of an eventual
European court case of
MS against ReactOS
(which MS can very
probably keep going
until the 22nd C if it
wants, meanwhile denying
ReactOS the right to be
used by the public,
because of the
possibility of
reverse assembling or
other copyright
infringements).
It may be that,
eventually, a
European court may side
with ReactOS, but then
that is an eventuality
(i) that absolutely
no-one can predict with
any rational
confidence and (ii) that
anyway may with great
rational confidence be
said to take many
years of fighting in the
courts, to the great
benefit of
lawyers, but no one
else.
So this is sad piece
of news.
Personally, I
wouldn't know what to
do, except that I do
agree with Betov that
the chances that
ReactOS will be
- eventually, after
looooong legal fights
and great amounts of
lawyer-bills - an Open
Source OS that is
adopted by many millions
are very slim
indeed.
It seems that Betov
thinks of Ubuntu
now, as an OS for
RosAsm. Ubuntu is a
Debian-distribution
of Linux, which -
so I have been told by
respectable CS-folks in
the know - is the best
available
Linux-distribution.
One problem is that
there seems to be hardly
any assembler or
assembly on Linux (this
being a place were
things are done in C);
another that it is
probably not easy at all
to adapt RosAsm to
Linux.
