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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?”

#141

Post by toyg »

discordance wrote: post #26
rs23296008n1 wrote: post #14

It 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?

Big companies are hardly ever coherent, let alone after a big pivot like Nadella’s.

The two things are also not exclusive: it might well be that MS “loves OSS” and that the ReactOS kernel was lifted wholesale from a Windows leak.

Besides, there are many who think projects like ReactOS or Mono are actually a net negative for the FOSS ecosystem, since they reduce the pressure on developers to switch away from Windows-based stacks.

Re: A Kernel Engineer at Microsoft's Answer to “What Do You Think about ReactOS?”

#143

Post by WhitneyLand »

axelriet wrote: post #70

Thanks for the link, o for a bunch of new followers on Quora today and was wondering why :) There are lots of good answers in this thread. In particular, someone took the time to look at the code, and that person wrote it only took them minutes to find similarities that make my opinion difficult to dismiss. About the lack of documentation, consider that only a tiny fraction of the kernel’s internals surface in the DD…

Do you think senior management at MS believes your comments are a good idea or at best benign? Or do you think all the details of your comments have just not yet fully reached VP level, legal, and PR?

I'm thinking they'd disapprove. That's just a guess, maybe they think it's fine and great. However, it may be worth at least considering another possibility.

Does your company want random technical employees, making non-technical statements, about how people are "ripping off" MS?

It's your job to raise the flag internally and help people understand up and down the chain, and across functional lines the context and perceived severity of the issue.

It's your job to write a blog post about how great your containers are architected. Not be a lone wolf, self appointed spokesperson using inflammatory language on issues with potential legal implications.

Please don't take this comment in the vein of you're just an engineer shut up and code, in fact you have a critical role as someone with domain expertise.

The point is when you stumble onto a high visibility cross-functional issue, I've found on sensitive topics many organizations seem to appreciate when someone reacts by coordinating, discussing, and facilitating a cross functional, unified response with one designated voice, that acts in the best interests the company.

Re: A Kernel Engineer at Microsoft's Answer to “What Do You Think about ReactOS?”

#144

Post by miohtama »

riffraff wrote: post #76
unstatusthequo wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Because reactos is irrelevant to Microsoft? The project has been around for 20 years, it's not likely to cause MSFT to lose any revenue any time soon, and there is no large corporation to extract money from in a lawsuit. It's basically the same reason they don't go after people who have a pirated version of Windows and just show them a "this is fake" warning.

Also, attempting to take it down would surely cause reputation damage to Microsoft. The "old" Microsoft is somewhat infamous. Going after the small guy would not help their image.

Re: A Kernel Engineer at Microsoft's Answer to “What Do You Think about ReactOS?”

#145

Post by msiyer »

moring wrote: post #88

> Many internal data structures and internal functions, not exported anywhere and not part of the public symbols I remember reading that even inside Microsoft, internal structures had to remain backwards-compatible because external, "very important" programs relied on them (violating the public API of course). I can't remember the source, unfortunately. Now it would be interesting which aspects can affect compatibili…

Maybe, you are looking for this:

https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20031224-00/?p=41...

Re: A Kernel Engineer at Microsoft's Answer to “What Do You Think about ReactOS?”

#146

Post by HeWhoLurksLate »

unstatusthequo wrote: post #48
rincebrain wrote: post #19

ReactOS 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?

I hate to say this: the guy who printed the "rescue disks" also decided to put the standard Windows Install Disk graphics on them. He got sued over the whole thing, but they look the same, and he didn't pay is what got him.

Re: A Kernel Engineer at Microsoft's Answer to “What Do You Think about ReactOS?”

#147

Post by swebs »

axelriet wrote: post #115
segfaultbuserr wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The author of post, Axel Rietschin at Microsoft, should remove this post and publicly apologize for his baseless defamation of ReactOS ("like a baby mosquito on the back of an giant elephant") if he cannot give authoritative evidence to back his claims. There may be copyright issues in some subroutines, but calling the entire project "a ripoff of the Windows Research Kernel" is an extraordinary, arrogant claim. If yo…

It’s my personal opinion and it’s based on my lecture of ReactOS code at the time I downloaded it (circa when I wrote my reply on Quora). I think anyone who can read C code can reach similar conclusions just by eyeballing the code in ReactOS and the code from the leaked Research Kernel, that can be found for example on GitHub. As a matter fact, someone on this thread did just that and it did not take that person very…

>and it’s based on my lecture of ReactOS code at the time I downloaded it

It would be interesting to see if this statement comes back to bite you in court if the opposite accusation is ever made. That Windows kernel developers have been stealing from GPL code :)

Re: A Kernel Engineer at Microsoft's Answer to “What Do You Think about ReactOS?”

#149

Post by acqq »

axelriet wrote: post #131
tiraniddo wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The private symbols have in the past ended up on the public symbol server (and quickly taken down), they have ending up "shipping" in public symbol packs. I can't point to specific incidents as the links to them no longer exist. This is why I said accidentally as they were not released as a conscious effort on MS's part. However you seem to want to claim the only place those symbols can come from is being stolen. Of…

That sounds reasonable (symbols inadvertently leaked). This would be a plausible explanation for at least some of the naming similarities.

See again what I quoted up in the thread related to the NSAKEY:

“Windows NT 4 Service Pack 5 (which had been released unstripped of its symbolic debugging data)”

Re: A Kernel Engineer at Microsoft's Answer to “What Do You Think about ReactOS?”

#150

Post by swebs »

I know this is only tangentially related, but could you verify the famous HN post by an anonymous Windows kernel developer explaining why Windows is so much slower than Linux

http://blog.zorinaq.com/i-contribute-to-the-windows-kernel-w...

It's one of the most insightful posts I've seen on this site, and if true, would certainly help to explain why Windows is so much worse than other operating systems :)

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