[ros-dev] Arwinss presentation

Aleksey Bragin aleksey at reactos.org
Sat Jan 16 22:44:37 CET 2010


	All,
today I would like to officially announce the (sub)project I was  
working on for the last half a year, and make a call to developers to  
participate.

ReactOS has been around for about 11 years, and it's been growing  
each year since then. The demand for an open source Windows- 
compatible operating system is huge: geek, servers, netbooks,  
accounting, point of sales, CAD... The list could go on and on.

Time goes by, new versions of Windows operating systems are being  
released. ReactOS usability still has not reached any significant  
value. Not to say ReactOS didn't even officially enter the Beta  
stage. Separately, there are many achievements: audio support  
appeared, bootloader is able to boot real Windows, some Windows  
binary drivers could be loaded and work in ReactOS, networking is  
being improved every day, the kernel is being actively worked on too.  
But all of that does not really matter for the end user. For a user  
it's important that a web-browser loads websites, instant messenger  
client connects and works, [Microsoft/Open] Office shows documents,  
email client gets new messages.

This bare usability is what's still missing, and if ti continues to  
be like this, I am afraid our project won't be of much use in another  
10 years. Certainly, I became very concerned and started analyzing  
situation. Being opensource project without major commercial  
sponsors, there are certain limitations as to what could be done to  
improve the situation, so mainly it's a matter of picking right  
priorities and properly managing (motivating) existing human resources.

The part of ReactOS which plays major role in compatibility and  
usability is Win32 subsystem. Right now, it's a huge monster which  
requires a lot more human resources than we have now. It's very hard  
and time consuming to reach even Windows 2000 level of compatibility  
with current amount of participating developers, and high entry level.

I came up with something which could solve this problem: Arwinss. To  
better explain what it is, I made a special presentation (URL to  
slides in PDF format is in the end of this email). Please imagine  
myself talking through it as I didn't perform/record it.

Now, after you read through the presentation, I would like to make a  
proposal to all developers (even newcomers, who never worked on  
ReactOS before). Let's make an Arwinss week, or Arwinss month. Every  
developer could definitely find a few hours during a week to hack  
Arwinss. Entry level is rather low, there are some basic docs about  
Arwinss in the wiki, and I am happy to consult about details.

If I could make this new subsystem out of nothing (out of Wine and  
ReactOS) almost alone (Kamil and Smiley help is very valued and  
appreciated!) within a few months, imagine what we could do all  
together?

With the best regards,
Aleksey Bragin.

The presentation: (links to further information are in the  
presentation too)
http://www.reactos.org/media/docs/2010/arwinss.pdf




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