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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?”

#211

Post by reuben_scratton »

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…

I hadn't heard of ReactOS but a quick glance at it's kernel source on GitHub and it's OBVIOUSLY straight from Windows.

Not that I work for MS but I used to work on NT graphics drivers and had a copy of the leaked NT kernel source for a while (strictly for personal interest!). This so very like what I remember.

IMHO such blatant theft shouldn't really go unpunished.

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

#212

Post by streb-lo »

echelon wrote: post #191
swebs wrote: post #150

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 :)

Interesting read, but I think the author is somewhat jaded. > We fill headcount with nine-to-five-with-kids types, What is wrong with having a life outside of work? Or children and responsibilities? Does anyone believe these make for worse engineers? It's not even legal for companies to force parents out of their workforce.

He later clarified:

> P.S. I have no problem with family people, and want to retract the offhand comment I made about them. I work with many awesome colleagues who happen to have children at home. What I really meant to say is that I don't like people who see what we do as more of a job than a passion, and it feels like we have a lot of these people these days. Maybe everyone does, though, or maybe I'm just completely wrong.

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

#213

Post by ForHackernews »

reuben_scratton wrote: post #211
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…

I hadn't heard of ReactOS but a quick glance at it's kernel source on GitHub and it's OBVIOUSLY straight from Windows. Not that I work for MS but I used to work on NT graphics drivers and had a copy of the leaked NT kernel source for a while (strictly for personal interest!). This so very like what I remember. IMHO such blatant theft shouldn't really go unpunished.

I kind of doubt this is the case, because more than 10 years ago they had accusations of this sort and undertook an extensive audit and cleanroom rewrite: https://www.reactos.org/reset-reboot-restart-legal-issues-an...

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

#214

Post by wazoox »

acqq wrote: post #77
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…

> Consider that the name of local variables is never part of the binaries, only public symbols are. "Never" and "only public" are wrong in the statement above, because non public symbols were indeed released by Microsoft. I guess you are young enough not to know that Microsoft accidentally did release some NT builds with the names of the internal variables, and such builds were intentionally made with less compiler o…

Back in NT3.x times, for quad-processors machines, and IIRC even NT 4.x with 8-processors machines (like AXEL crazy SMP monsters) Microsoft shipped windows NT as code, and you had to compile it on the machine it was to run on.

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

#215

Post by dang »

dingby wrote: post #118
axelriet wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft does not release the kernel’s private symbols, trust me on that. But yes there was some leaks in the past, small portions of NT4 and W2K were leaked, I think I link to a Google query pointing to articles discussing the leaks in the Quora reply.

You chuckleheads “released” pretty much everything in the ASSERT statements of checked builds until Windows Vista.

Personal attacks and name-calling, as here and in your previous two comments, are not ok on HN. We ban accounts that do that. It's great if you're providing correct information, but please edit out the swipes.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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

#216

Post by notus »

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

You didn't spell started correctly both on here and on quora aka thanks for the low effort canned response. Maybe try addressing their points directly. This is bad PR for you.

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

#217

Post by dang »

swebs wrote: post #150

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 :)

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20341933.

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

#218

Post by jeditobe »

Udo wrote: post #190
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

This is an utterly insufficient answer to the allegation that you copied internal data structures entirely from the NT kernel, including (why?) their names. Brushing this off as a free "PR campaign" only works if those NT programmers simply made everything up. That's possible, because we as the general public have no way of knowing. But it's hard to ignore that there are just two possible scenarios here, nothing in b…

Well, now please re-read your statement

Do you understand that internal data structures entirely from the NT kernel, including (why?) their names != verbatim code from NT in your source

The program code is logic first of all.

For the similarities of names and structures itself - the answer is in this already mentioned video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2D9ExVc0G10&t=9m53s from the 9:53 moment of time. TL:DW there are a lot of legal ways of obtaining names of variables, exported functions and structures

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

#219

Post by StudentStuff »

mkl wrote: post #107
StudentStuff wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What stops someone from viewing that repo over Tor, on a different git server, or at a public library, unsecured WiFi network, etc and being considered tainted? At what point is someone considered untainted? This seems like a grey area that slows the pace of R&D in countries that believe code is copyrightable & patentable (the US and select Western countries) compared to say New Zealand & China, where these aren't an…

Where did you get that idea about New Zealand copyright? Code is copyrightable here, see e.g. [1] or [2]. And it's not about belief, but definition. Copyright and patents are human inventions defined by countries' laws (which is why different countries have different rules: different definitions). In NZ, as in many countries, "Computer software follows the rules for literary work" ([2] again). [1] http://www.burgess.…

New Zealand abolished patents for software, that is what I was thinking of: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2013/08/29...

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

#220

Post by monocasa »

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…

Microsoft has leaked tons of private variable names publicly though. See the whole _NSAKEY thing for one example.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSAKEY

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