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?”
#2What a fscking bootlicker.
Re: A Kernel Engineer at Microsoft's Answer to “What Do You Think about ReactOS?”
#3Interesting, but I’d really like it if they actually pointed out some examples. There may in fact be stolen source code or at least it is possible some stolen source code was referenced in ReactOS - there’s virtually no way to prove that it didn’t happen - but one human’s observation could be very flawed and represent a view extrapolated from a small subset of stolen code. How much of the code could they have possibly read?
It’s also worth noting that large portions of ReactOS come from Wine and I’m sure those portions have plenty of internal NT structures too.
The bits about NT not being documented are bordering silly, though. The lack of documentation has certainly never stopped anyone. Stardock for example does some very interesting and very undocumented things, as do many (most?) DRM and obfuscation engines.
Personally, I think that if ReactOS has really stolen substantial amounts of code, then it genuinely didn’t pay off and probably was not that useful.
Re: A Kernel Engineer at Microsoft's Answer to “What Do You Think about ReactOS?”
#4I always heard that ReactOS had an ultra-strict vetting process, where no one who had ever so much as been within spitting distance of Redmond at some point in their life was allowed to touch the code, to support their claim of a clean-room implementation in case Microsoft ever decided to make a fuss about it. Seems like a lot of pointless effort if they actually did use leaks or university kernel releases. So either this guy is mistaken, my info about ReactOS is bad, or the project is run by people very ignorant of the law.
Re: A Kernel Engineer at Microsoft's Answer to “What Do You Think about ReactOS?”
#5It's hard to know what specifically he means to have been copied. But it would not surprise me if a lot of "impossibly" identical structure member names have been published as ntoskrnl.pdb (kernel debug symbols).
I have also seen some pretty good reverse engineering of nt native APIs out there.
Re: A Kernel Engineer at Microsoft's Answer to “What Do You Think about ReactOS?”
#6Interesting, but I’d really like it if they actually pointed out some examples. There may in fact be stolen source code or at least it is possible some stolen source code was referenced in ReactOS - there’s virtually no way to prove that it didn’t happen - but one human’s observation could be very flawed and represent a view extrapolated from a small subset of stolen code. How much of the code could they have possibl…
Well said. I don't know if ReactOS has stolen code in it, but the Quora has some very shallow accusations. Besides, there are many ways of reverse engineering. Didn't Compaq famously have one team writing documentation for another team implementing? With the doc team scavenging info wherever they could.
Re: A Kernel Engineer at Microsoft's Answer to “What Do You Think about ReactOS?”
#7I always heard that ReactOS had an ultra-strict vetting process, where no one who had ever so much as been within spitting distance of Redmond at some point in their life was allowed to touch the code, to support their claim of a clean-room implementation in case Microsoft ever decided to make a fuss about it. Seems like a lot of pointless effort if they actually did use leaks or university kernel releases. So either…
I heard WINE has a rule like that but ReactOS does not.
But I also heard they borrow some code from WINE.
Re: A Kernel Engineer at Microsoft's Answer to “What Do You Think about ReactOS?”
#8What a fscking bootlicker.
How extraordinarily fair and thoughtful of you...
Re: A Kernel Engineer at Microsoft's Answer to “What Do You Think about ReactOS?”
#9Someone should get Alex Ionescu's take. He both used to be _the_ kernel guy of ReactOS, and he some wrote chapters in Windows Internals, some of Microsoft's deepest official public documentation.
Re: A Kernel Engineer at Microsoft's Answer to “What Do You Think about ReactOS?”
#10I always heard that ReactOS had an ultra-strict vetting process, where no one who had ever so much as been within spitting distance of Redmond at some point in their life was allowed to touch the code, to support their claim of a clean-room implementation in case Microsoft ever decided to make a fuss about it. Seems like a lot of pointless effort if they actually did use leaks or university kernel releases. So either…
I heard WINE has a rule like that but ReactOS does not. But I also heard they borrow some code from WINE.
ReactOS had the same process.