Took me a few reads to parse that title. How about something like “A Kernel Engineer from Microsoft Answers: “What Do You Think About ReactOS?””
A Kernel Engineer at Microsoft's Answer to “What Do You Think about ReactOS?”
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Re: A Kernel Engineer at Microsoft's Answer to “What Do You Think about ReactOS?”
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
Reverse engineering is usually considered a violation of proprietary software IP right (not sure the exact legal term)? I know at every company I've ever worked at I've been told to never under any circumstances attempt to decompile or reverse engineer another company's proprietary software product. Maybe that's just legal CYA but decompiling+documenting then re-implementing sure sounds like stealing to me...
In the United States, clean room reverse engineering is legal for interoperability purposes. In general reverse engineering is legal unless there is a contract involved prohibiting it. Unless you’re reusing the original source code, there’s no copyright violation per se, simply functionality reimplemented in a compatible manner. The lengths that ReactOS goes to might actually be overkill, but no one can credibly clai…
Does a software license in this case count as a contract?
Moreover, interoperability is not the same as distribution no? Honestly ReactOS's lengths do not seem like overkill to me, quite the contrary. Even re-implementing an API is legally suspect these days (see: Oracle vs. Google re: Android). Copying the internals of a piece of software by having one person explain verbally exactly how it works to another person who translates that to code feels a lot more like stealing than that.
Re: A Kernel Engineer at Microsoft's Answer to “What Do You Think about ReactOS?”
#43It would be interesting to see this engineer's statements tested in court. Microsoft are highly motivated to protect their source code so there would have to be a reason why they haven't. ReactOS is definitely NOT a mosquito to an elephant in violation terms if this engineers comments have validity. I'm thinking patents, copyrights etc. The fact that Microsoft haven't acted for all this time is by itself evidence tha…
I find the attitude more interesting.. on one side we have Linux embedded in Windows, more Linux VMs on Azure than Windows Server, MS employees proudly brandishing shirts with 'I heart Linux' and 'I heart OSS' and on the other side we have Windows Kernal developers saying their ideas were stolen. Maybe it's a sign of the relationship between Azure and Windows teams?
How are these two things related at all? I use Linux too but would be highly annoyed if someone stole my car. Are you implying that Linux users are in some way "stealing" from the Linux authors?
Re: A Kernel Engineer at Microsoft's Answer to “What Do You Think about ReactOS?”
#44The MS guy says there was no public NT internals doc. However many people refer to VAX/VMS Internals and Data Structures as being very similar. Both were architected by DNC.
Its bullshit too, there is not much public by MS but there is plenty of third party work done on documenting it.
Re: A Kernel Engineer at Microsoft's Answer to “What Do You Think about ReactOS?”
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is that really clean-room, though? (Note that "clean-room" is not a term in US copyright law, it's just a technique that certain people hope results in a work that is not a derivative of whatever they're reimplementing.) If I learn a pop song, and sing it and accompany myself on the piano, and someone else transcribes it, then two things are true: first, of course it will result in identical melodies and chord progre…
Clean room re-implementations have stood up to many court challenges through the years, and are interoperability is explicitly permitted under things like the DMCA.
Considering IBM couldn't stop Compaq after taking some pretty good steps, it has been legal for a while. Without clean room re-implementations we would have no PC clone industry.
Re: A Kernel Engineer at Microsoft's Answer to “What Do You Think about ReactOS?”
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is that really clean-room, though? (Note that "clean-room" is not a term in US copyright law, it's just a technique that certain people hope results in a work that is not a derivative of whatever they're reimplementing.) If I learn a pop song, and sing it and accompany myself on the piano, and someone else transcribes it, then two things are true: first, of course it will result in identical melodies and chord progre…
Clean room re-implementations have stood up to many court challenges through the years, and are interoperability is explicitly permitted under things like the DMCA.
Yes, many clean-room reimplementations have stood up to court challenges. But many non-clean-room reimplementations have stood up, too. My argument is that it's neither necessary nor sufficient, just loosely correlated, and clean-room is not inherently a defense. And in particular, my argument is that it matters whether the communication between the dirty and clean rooms is a specification of an interface, or a description of a reverse-engineered implementation.
And yes, interoperability is permitted - that's why I'm saying it seems fine to clean-room reimplement a driver to communicate with a specific device. You do not need to have the same internal structures and the same function names to achieve interoperability, and I think making that argument that the DMCA allows you to have the same internal code layout will be hard.
Re: A Kernel Engineer at Microsoft's Answer to “What Do You Think about ReactOS?”
#47It would be interesting to see this engineer's statements tested in court. Microsoft are highly motivated to protect their source code so there would have to be a reason why they haven't. ReactOS is definitely NOT a mosquito to an elephant in violation terms if this engineers comments have validity. I'm thinking patents, copyrights etc. The fact that Microsoft haven't acted for all this time is by itself evidence tha…
I find the attitude more interesting.. on one side we have Linux embedded in Windows, more Linux VMs on Azure than Windows Server, MS employees proudly brandishing shirts with 'I heart Linux' and 'I heart OSS' and on the other side we have Windows Kernal developers saying their ideas were stolen. Maybe it's a sign of the relationship between Azure and Windows teams?
I interned at Microsoft in late 2000's. The sales engineers had an "anti oss" budget. Many of these guys still work at Microsoft today, now "hearts" open source and linux...
Re: A Kernel Engineer at Microsoft's Answer to “What Do You Think about ReactOS?”
#48ReactOS underwent a big audit years ago because people kept saying things like this, and AFAIK it's over and nothing exciting turned up. [1] - https://reactos.org/wiki/Audit
Don't we all think if the accusations were true, Microsoft would have aggressively persued legal action? Remember that guy they sued into oblivion and maybe prison over "rescue discs" for old PCs? Microsoft it notoriously sue happy. Why not here?
Re: A Kernel Engineer at Microsoft's Answer to “What Do You Think about ReactOS?”
#49At the risk of not adding anything substantive to the discussion, I would just say if I was an engineer working on Windows, I would dial down the arrogance a little bit.
Re: A Kernel Engineer at Microsoft's Answer to “What Do You Think about ReactOS?”
#50The researcher is unable to name any data structure in the source file. If -- as he claims -- it's littered with them, this should be easy to prove. His shock that this could be a clean room implementation would be meaningful, except that the WINE project has successfully clean-room reverse engineered much of the Win32 API (including private stuff) by observing how programs use them. Literally no one wants to read Mi…
Just a tip - if you want to make statements and have people take you seriously, stick to facts and don't add stupid things like:
> Literally no one wants to read Microsoft code anyway; knowing them, it's probably horrendous.
This added NOTHING to your previous statement, and only served to make me think your acting as a troll and actually worked against everything else you had previously said.