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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?”

#201

Post by tinus_hn »

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…

I presume you quit working on Windows after you read the ReactOS source code, offered to you under the GPL license only? Or is Microsoft planning to release it under a compatible license?

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

#202

Post by shmerl »

pizza234 wrote: post #180
jeditobe wrote: post #148

Hello from ReactOS team! We don't use the leaked code from MS, We don't use Windows Research Kernel, We thank you for the PR campaign you have stared 'pro bono' for our project! ;D

OP wrote "If any of the presumed authors wants to chime in and explain the similitudes, I’m happy to change my mind". Since you're from the team, could you provide some example explanations? Technical arguments are surely significant, rather than a purely rhetoric answer.

I don't think they need to. The OP blames ReactOS, the burden of proof is on him, if he thinks it's an issue. Otherwise it's called trolling.

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

#203

Post by Jallal »

dboreham wrote: post #192

Fascinating thread. You don't often see this kind of thing discussed openly. One personal experience: years ago I worked on a project where I had the task (I will not go into why..) of re-implementing some tricky, non-documented functionality for which I had the source code for another implementation available to study, but also the goal to make it hard to prove from inspection of the code I wrote that it had been in…

When you've read and understood some piece of code, you're more prone to replicate it, even without realizing it. And ReactOS developers have obviously some extensive experience with Windows API, and it should be not suprise that any attempt to rewrite Windows will fall into the same trap.

I'm not saying that their code is "clean" or is a "rip-off". Obviously, I don't have a clue about it. Maybe they were just lazy and they did not care.

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

#204

Post by dragonwriter »

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…

> It’s my personal opinion

Others in the thread have pointed out several verifiably false fact claims in it, so it's both derogatory and at least in part factually false, not a mere matter of subjective opinion.

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

#205

Post by MikusR »

axelriet wrote: post #130
dingby wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The more you write in these threads the more you sound like a fool. https://youtu.be/2D9ExVc0G10 Start around the 9 minute mark.

Thanks for the personal attack lol. I watched and did not learn much, except that he’s a quite decent orator. I think what he describes is the process he uses to write his books.

In that talk he literary says how he got names of files and variables.

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

#206

Post by jeditobe »

JaimeThompson wrote: post #187
jeditobe wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, he did not. Mark Russinovich also started to work on Microsoft only recently.

Mark Mussinovich started working at Microsoft in 2006 according to Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Russinovich

Yep, you are right, https://www.linkedin.com/in/markrussinovich/

But still in 2006 ReactOS already had its 0.3.0 version and 8 years of existence ^) And book Microsoft Windows Internals, Fourth Edition has already been released in 2004

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

#207

Post by [deleted] »

Jallal wrote: post #203
dboreham wrote: post #192

Fascinating thread. You don't often see this kind of thing discussed openly. One personal experience: years ago I worked on a project where I had the task (I will not go into why..) of re-implementing some tricky, non-documented functionality for which I had the source code for another implementation available to study, but also the goal to make it hard to prove from inspection of the code I wrote that it had been in…

When you've read and understood some piece of code, you're more prone to replicate it, even without realizing it. And ReactOS developers have obviously some extensive experience with Windows API, and it should be not suprise that any attempt to rewrite Windows will fall into the same trap. I'm not saying that their code is "clean" or is a "rip-off". Obviously, I don't have a clue about it. Maybe they were just lazy a…

[deleted]

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

#208

Post by tozeur »

jeditobe wrote: post #181
whereistimbo wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did he work for Microsoft though? If yes, I wonder what kind of interaction between him and Mark Russinovich.

No, he did not. Mark Russinovich also started to work on Microsoft only recently.

His company got acquired by Microsoft

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

#209

Post by repolfx »

I took a quick look at the structure of the WRK and ReactOS, as the MS developer suggested.

I can see what he means.

The first thing we observe is that the directory structure is basically identical. Yes, NT kernel subsystems are identified with short codes like "Ke" or "Ex". It's plausible that someone with a lot of NT knowledge would end up creating top level directories with these exact names, as is true of the WRK. But it seems kind of unlikely: the Wine sources do not show this pattern.

If we look at the Kernel Executive (Ke) subtree, we can see that there is a thing called a "Balance Set Manager". Both source trees define it in a file called balmgr.c - not only the location of the file but also the file name is identical.

https://github.com/Zer0Mem0ry/ntoskrnl/blob/master/Ke/balmgr... https://github.com/reactos/reactos/blob/master/ntoskrnl/ke/b...

It appears from the module description that the "balance set manager" is an optimisation of some sort related to reducing memory usage. Is this really something that needs a reimplementation with identical function prototypes?

Looking at the code of the identically named KeBalanceSetManager function, we can see that not only is the function prototype identical, but the order in which it does things is also identical. First it changes a thread priority, then it schedules a periodic timer callback.

Some of the local variables in these functions have identical names: PeriodTimer, DueTime, WaitObjects. Yes, these are obvious names. It's not a smoking gun. But it's not looking good.

Finally we discover that the ReactOS Balance Manager does .... nothing. It enters a loop which starts out by doing a wait for an event (fine, it's inherent to the task), and then switches on the result. But the code in the arms of the switch are commented out (the commented out code does a subset of the stuff in the NT code). The loop does nothing, just sits blocking in a loop forever. Why does this code in ReactOS exist if it does nothing?

It's the same story for the other big function in this file, KiScanReadyQueues. The code is virtually identical, line for line, with minor formatting and occasional trivial naming differences. Even the assertions are identical.

I'm not alleging anything specific or illegal, just comparing a small part of both codebases. However given what I've just seen, I wouldn't touch ReactOS with a barge pole. The Microsoft guy's complaint is entirely understandable.

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

#210

Post by rincebrain »

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…

I don't suppose you ever compared parts of the tree that weren't present in the various sort-of-public NT source leaks or research kernel, to see if idiosyncrasies there matched as well?
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