[ros-kernel] Re: Tainted code in User32?

[Nate DeSimone]

>
>
>>All that being said, I have a question for you:
>>
>>I realize you are not a lawyer, but could you clarify on exactly how 
>>what we are doing is illegal, to the best of your knowledge? Does my 
>>clarifications here in this e-mail change that picture at all? I can't 
>>clarify enough, it is NOBODY's goal here at ReactOS to "clone" any 
>>Microsoft OS.
>>    
>>

    What I don't understand is if we are importing Wine DLLs, and he is 
a member of the Wine Project, then why is he bashing us, he could 
probably fix code based on illegally found information internally with 
Wine much easier, and then thoses fixes would flow into our source 
branch next time ReactOS syncs with Wine's CVS tree.  If I remember 
correctly he was arguing over code taken from Wine.

    At any rate, I personally think that you guys have always been very 
cautious about copyright, and you have made a clear effort to ensure 
that you are not abusing anyone's copyright.  As for ReactOS getting 
sued, if this project becomes what we want it to become, then it is 
unavoidable.  My hope is this project reaches maturity and gets some 
real momentum behind it in time to be able to compete with Longhorn.  
Longhorn's new design is so heavily patented and it has been it the 
works for so long that if it takes off we will be many years behind 
Microsoft all over again, and with the patents they have on it we won't 
be able to do something like ReactOS for Longhorn, when you consider 
that the entire OS is going to run off of .NET, which if I remember was 
a buzz word in 1998 they have quite an advantage in years of work 
compared to the Open Source folks.  However if ReactOS is able to put a 
dent in Microsoft's marketshare, and we only have support for the old 
operating system model, as well as new ReactOS specific innovations 
(prehaps our own .NET like API, based off Mono) it will be difficult for 
any of Microsoft's new technologies to take off.  Not only will that 
help stop Microsoft from locking people into thier products, it will 
keep Microsoft's new DRM technology from becoming a real problem.  Sorry 
about that rant, but in short keep up the good work!