Goodbye for a while

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Reactions
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Goodbye for a while

Post by Reactions »

Hi all,
I have decided to stop working on ReactOS and will no longer be on the forums or Jira. I am genuinely sorry that I was unable to deliver on my promises. However, I love what you all are doing and admire the dedication and determination. I might donate in the future once l actually have money. I wish you all the best of luck.
Sincerely,
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Quim
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Re: Goodbye for a while

Post by Quim »

Reactions wrote: Wed Jul 24, 2019 4:03 pm Hi all,
I have decided to stop working on ReactOS and will no longer be on the forums or Jira. I am genuinely sorry that I was unable to deliver on my promises. However, I love what you all are doing and admire the dedication and determination. I might donate in the future once l actually have money. I wish you all the best of luck.
Sincerely,
Reactions
ReactOS team would missed you (I´m sad). :cry:
Could you use your experience working in ReactOS to attract more developers or helpful people?
That you are out doesn´t mean that you cannot colaborate in other ways. Maybe recruiting ReactOS devs, valuable fans,....

That´s something unexplainable for me: even with all publicity (the Open Source Windows), ReactOS still have few developers... If it is "well-known" in some form, then there must be at least 50 or even 100 devs working.
There must be millions of trained informatic people out there who could help ReactOS development without requiring any payment. In some ways happened with GNU/Linux development, why not ReactOS?

The "nothing is interesting in this project" seems unexplainable to me. It is as if this project were under the shadow of a powerful curse.

Or is it the typical complex case (nothing interesting + GNU/Linux monopoly fanatism + fear to Microsoft + ....)?
If someone could explain. I still don´t understand. :?
Last edited by Quim on Thu Jul 25, 2019 6:49 am, edited 1 time in total.
Quim
Posts: 257
Joined: Wed Jul 04, 2018 11:45 pm

Re: Goodbye for a while

Post by Quim »

Maybe it is time to think in something with massive impact worldwide. :?:
jcalvarez
Posts: 27
Joined: Thu Apr 02, 2009 10:41 am

Re: Goodbye for a while

Post by jcalvarez »

Quim wrote: Thu Jul 25, 2019 6:22 am
Reactions wrote: Wed Jul 24, 2019 4:03 pm Hi all,
I have decided to stop working on ReactOS and will no longer be on the forums or Jira. I am genuinely sorry that I was unable to deliver on my promises. However, I love what you all are doing and admire the dedication and determination. I might donate in the future once l actually have money. I wish you all the best of luck.
Sincerely,
Reactions
ReactOS team would missed you (I´m sad). :cry:
Could you use your experience working in ReactOS to attract more developers or helpful people?
That you are out doesn´t mean that you cannot colaborate in other ways. Maybe recruiting ReactOS devs, valuable fans,....

That´s something unexplainable for me: even with all publicity (the Open Source Windows), ReactOS still have few developers... If it is "well-known" in some form, then there must be at least 50 or even 100 devs working.
There must be millions of trained informatic people out there who could help ReactOS development without requiring any payment. In some ways happened with GNU/Linux development, why not ReactOS?

The "nothing is interesting in this project" seems unexplainable to me. It is as if this project were under the shadow of a powerful curse.

Or is it the typical complex case (nothing interesting + GNU/Linux monopoly fanatism + fear to Microsoft + ....)?
If someone could explain. I still don´t understand. :?
I think there are several reasons for the statement "nothing is interesting in this project":
1) Client computing has been moving to the web. A lot of things are done these days in a browser, and there is no need for another Windows product. The one from Microsoft works well enough.
2) Linux has a lot of developers because it is very popular in servers and embedded systems, and even Android sits on top of the Linux kernel.
3) ReactOS is always shooting a moving target (MS Windows). It is not very clear what the end game is. And there is no big incentive in client computing to use ReactOS, because Windows is not too expensive and comes pre-installed virtually in every PC. For a server you use Linux/FreeBSD etc.
My point is that in my opinion coding for ReactOS is just a learning/academical exercise, a very good one if you want to learn the windows internals. But not much more.
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irony
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Re: Goodbye for a while

Post by irony »

I think there are several reasons for the statement "nothing is interesting in this project":
this statement is false and has jumped out of nowhere in this thread. the guy, starting the thread said nothing closely similar. it was just a random idea of Quim, but even he discarded it as "unexplainable", thus - a hardly trustworthy one. lack of developers is not due to "nothing interesting", it's because it's hard and not for everybody. it's not stupid javascript. :lol:
1) Client computing has been moving to the web.
this is as the snake oil marketing BS as that one of several years ago coming from google, that PCs will disappear and everybody will do their computer work on tablets. yeah, right. won't happen.
2) Linux has a lot of developers because it is very popular in servers and embedded systems, and even Android sits on top of the Linux kernel.
servers... magical word, almost like boobies. :lol: there are different servers, you know. cheapo web servers maybe are occupied by linux, but there is a lot of other servers and linux is not the only one used. windows, hpux, aix, solaris - they all have their niche, and I'd say, their niche is more prestigious than of linux. because for those OS, people pay crazy money to use, whereas linux is always is a mediocre freebie. CentOS is named that way not by coincidence. that name encodes the whole secret of the linux popularity on servers. it's not because of the GNU/Stallman's GNU/religion. it's because of availability for free. in expense of quality, but who cares, right?
but what this has to do with the "nothing is interesting in this project" reasoning? okay, linux is megapopular among web hosting. so what? how that could impact attractiveness of ReactOS or a similar project? in no way it could. because the former is totally irrelevant to the latter. first, - it's not interfering at all. so let linux be popular on those spherical servers in vacuum. but also the linux versus ReactOS/Haiku or any community project comparison by the criterion of popularity on some servers is wrong because linux is NOT an enthusiastic community project. now, it's an offloading project for corporations and they are main contributors to it. they spend a little portion of resources they would need to spend should they do everything by their own for some quality product (like their homebrew unixes, that ALL are superior to linux), but still they have PAID employees to write for linux. and ReactOS or Haiku are communities, no such paid employees from loving open sauce corporations. this makes that relation even more ridiculosuly wrong. but in areas, where those fake smiling "big friends" of linux aren't much interested in supporting it, even linux has strong lack of developers, just like ReactOS does. for example, ARM single board computers. no Intel, IBM or whatever "admirer" here. and so, communities like sunxi do all the job of maintaining, mainlining and all that linux stuff. and they and their users constantly struggle with the "almost works" situation. because SoC vendors care little about linux and make as few of the work as to be able to run that android crap. there, you would find just the same picture - lack of resources and people, voluntarily doing the job in their free time. they aren't numerous as well, as you could suspect.
My point is that in my opinion coding for ReactOS is just a learning/academical exercise, a very good one if you want to learn the windows internals. But not much more.
you forget the main reason why people do something for this project. it's their interest. or passion. they like it, so they do. this simple. it's not a too common hobby, thus a so tiny number of contributors. in addition to the fact that the goal set is freaking hard. don't forget - binary compatibility with the most developed OS in the world - is kinda not the easiest hobby even among system programming.

The below statement of Quim is wrong in many respects:
There must be millions of trained informatic people out there who could help ReactOS development without requiring any payment. In some ways happened with GNU/Linux development, why not ReactOS?
millions of developers working for free. :lol: in what the Universe? none project has this.
ReactOS has the problem of getting momentum - if it were well usable, it would get much more users and developers as well. given how Windows blows away linux from desktop, ReactOS could easily overcome the latter there too very qucikly. But for being "well usable" it needs developers. This loop is the problem. It might resolve eventually. But one thing needed for sure - is not babbling like this in this strange thread. :)
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dizt3mp3r
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Re: Goodbye for a while

Post by dizt3mp3r »

jcalvarez wrote: Fri Jul 26, 2019 3:41 pm3) ReactOS is always shooting a moving target (MS Windows).
Sorry to add to this thread but this one is rowlocks... Can I suggest to jcalverez that he does some investigation into reality before posting?
Skillset: VMS,DOS,Windows Sysadmin from 1985, fault-tolerance, VaxCluster, Alpha,Sparc. DCL,QB,VBDOS- VB6,.NET, PHP,NODE.JS, Graphic Design, Project Manager, CMS, Quad Electronics. classic cars & m'bikes. Artist in water & oils. Historian.
dark
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Re: Goodbye for a while

Post by dark »

I've followed ReactOS and Linux for a REALLY LONG TIME. Frankly the status of main stream operating systems is forever stuck in a status quo. Linux never developed a proper SDK so package managers are basically holding together a desktop operating system with crazy glue, completely terrible solution for end users as long as no proper SDK is present, but they won't develop it because they see their current system as superior because it's open source and not objectively as the pain it actually is. Windows is comfortably sitting on top even though the install size is huge. Android and iOS while based on Linux/BSD/Unix are popular because they have an SDK, as long as Google and Apple pay the bills they're not going to make those systems full blown PC replacements. Finally Apple PCs have gone up astronomically in price because they know they're the only good alternative to Windows, and they show no signs of releasing reasonable priced computers.

Maybe if ReactOS gets a thousand full time developers we'll see some major progress, but right now everyone is pretty much stuck with 3 options and no real competition. Maybe a project to get the ReactOS kernel stable and build a new GUI (or even borrow Linux's GUI + Apps) would be a faster way forward.
emule01
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Re: Goodbye for a while

Post by emule01 »

we need x64
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dizt3mp3r
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Re: Goodbye for a while

Post by dizt3mp3r »

dark wrote: Mon Jul 29, 2019 4:37 am I've followed ReactOS and Linux for a REALLY LONG TIME. Frankly the status of main stream operating systems is forever stuck in a status quo. Linux never developed a proper SDK so package managers are basically holding together a desktop operating system with crazy glue, completely terrible solution for end users as long as no proper SDK is present, but they won't develop it because they see their current system as superior because it's open source and not objectively as the pain it actually is. Windows is comfortably sitting on top even though the install size is huge. Android and iOS while based on Linux/BSD/Unix are popular because they have an SDK, as long as Google and Apple pay the bills they're not going to make those systems full blown PC replacements. Finally Apple PCs have gone up astronomically in price because they know they're the only good alternative to Windows, and they show no signs of releasing reasonable priced computers.

Maybe if ReactOS gets a thousand full time developers we'll see some major progress, but right now everyone is pretty much stuck with 3 options and no real competition. Maybe a project to get the ReactOS kernel stable and build a new GUI (or even borrow Linux's GUI + Apps) would be a faster way forward.
- and your point is? Or were you just needing to express yourself?
Skillset: VMS,DOS,Windows Sysadmin from 1985, fault-tolerance, VaxCluster, Alpha,Sparc. DCL,QB,VBDOS- VB6,.NET, PHP,NODE.JS, Graphic Design, Project Manager, CMS, Quad Electronics. classic cars & m'bikes. Artist in water & oils. Historian.
jcalvarez
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Re: Goodbye for a while

Post by jcalvarez »

irony wrote: Fri Jul 26, 2019 11:15 pm
I think there are several reasons for the statement "nothing is interesting in this project":
this statement is false and has jumped out of nowhere in this thread. the guy, starting the thread said nothing closely similar. it was just a random idea of Quim, but even he discarded it as "unexplainable", thus - a hardly trustworthy one. lack of developers is not due to "nothing interesting", it's because it's hard and not for everybody. it's not stupid javascript. :lol:
1) Client computing has been moving to the web.
this is as the snake oil marketing BS as that one of several years ago coming from google, that PCs will disappear and everybody will do their computer work on tablets. yeah, right. won't happen.
2) Linux has a lot of developers because it is very popular in servers and embedded systems, and even Android sits on top of the Linux kernel.
servers... magical word, almost like boobies. :lol: there are different servers, you know. cheapo web servers maybe are occupied by linux, but there is a lot of other servers and linux is not the only one used. windows, hpux, aix, solaris - they all have their niche, and I'd say, their niche is more prestigious than of linux. because for those OS, people pay crazy money to use, whereas linux is always is a mediocre freebie. CentOS is named that way not by coincidence. that name encodes the whole secret of the linux popularity on servers. it's not because of the GNU/Stallman's GNU/religion. it's because of availability for free. in expense of quality, but who cares, right?
but what this has to do with the "nothing is interesting in this project" reasoning? okay, linux is megapopular among web hosting. so what? how that could impact attractiveness of ReactOS or a similar project? in no way it could. because the former is totally irrelevant to the latter. first, - it's not interfering at all. so let linux be popular on those spherical servers in vacuum. but also the linux versus ReactOS/Haiku or any community project comparison by the criterion of popularity on some servers is wrong because linux is NOT an enthusiastic community project. now, it's an offloading project for corporations and they are main contributors to it. they spend a little portion of resources they would need to spend should they do everything by their own for some quality product (like their homebrew unixes, that ALL are superior to linux), but still they have PAID employees to write for linux. and ReactOS or Haiku are communities, no such paid employees from loving open sauce corporations. this makes that relation even more ridiculosuly wrong. but in areas, where those fake smiling "big friends" of linux aren't much interested in supporting it, even linux has strong lack of developers, just like ReactOS does. for example, ARM single board computers. no Intel, IBM or whatever "admirer" here. and so, communities like sunxi do all the job of maintaining, mainlining and all that linux stuff. and they and their users constantly struggle with the "almost works" situation. because SoC vendors care little about linux and make as few of the work as to be able to run that android crap. there, you would find just the same picture - lack of resources and people, voluntarily doing the job in their free time. they aren't numerous as well, as you could suspect.
My point is that in my opinion coding for ReactOS is just a learning/academical exercise, a very good one if you want to learn the windows internals. But not much more.
you forget the main reason why people do something for this project. it's their interest. or passion. they like it, so they do. this simple. it's not a too common hobby, thus a so tiny number of contributors. in addition to the fact that the goal set is freaking hard. don't forget - binary compatibility with the most developed OS in the world - is kinda not the easiest hobby even among system programming.

The below statement of Quim is wrong in many respects:
There must be millions of trained informatic people out there who could help ReactOS development without requiring any payment. In some ways happened with GNU/Linux development, why not ReactOS?
millions of developers working for free. :lol: in what the Universe? none project has this.
ReactOS has the problem of getting momentum - if it were well usable, it would get much more users and developers as well. given how Windows blows away linux from desktop, ReactOS could easily overcome the latter there too very qucikly. But for being "well usable" it needs developers. This loop is the problem. It might resolve eventually. But one thing needed for sure - is not babbling like this in this strange thread. :)
When I saw " there are different servers, you know. cheapo web servers maybe are occupied by linux" I realised it does no make sense to argue with you. You have no idea what are you talking about. Unless IBM mainframes are now classified as "cheapo"....
jcalvarez
Posts: 27
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Re: Goodbye for a while

Post by jcalvarez »

dizt3mp3r wrote: Sat Jul 27, 2019 1:25 am
jcalvarez wrote: Fri Jul 26, 2019 3:41 pm3) ReactOS is always shooting a moving target (MS Windows).
Sorry to add to this thread but this one is rowlocks... Can I suggest to jcalverez that he does some investigation into reality before posting?
Enlighten me please. (and is jcalvarez, not jcalverez).
Just to clarify my question. This is from your FAQ:
Q: So...can I install ReactOS and run any software compatible with Windows on it?
A: That's the idea. However we highly recommend to check if your favourite apps run by trying them and reporting either your success with the community, or any problems you encounter with our task tracker. ReactOS is still an on-going project and not all the apps and drivers run perfect on it just now. The best way to check the compatibility is to install ReactOS inside a virtual machine ( a step by step and video guide can be found here) and try things for yourself. There are tons of pieces of software and, as you can imagine it's is impossible for us to try and to track them all.

So it is a moving target. Windows evolves, adds new APIs etc, and you need to follow.
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dizt3mp3r
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Re: Goodbye for a while

Post by dizt3mp3r »

jcalvarez wrote: Tue Aug 13, 2019 12:40 pm So it is a moving target. Windows evolves, adds new APIs etc, and you need to follow.
You need to research what ReactOS is aiming to achieve.

Read - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReactOS
Skillset: VMS,DOS,Windows Sysadmin from 1985, fault-tolerance, VaxCluster, Alpha,Sparc. DCL,QB,VBDOS- VB6,.NET, PHP,NODE.JS, Graphic Design, Project Manager, CMS, Quad Electronics. classic cars & m'bikes. Artist in water & oils. Historian.
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irony
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Re: Goodbye for a while

Post by irony »

When I saw " there are different servers, you know. cheapo web servers maybe are occupied by linux" I realised it does no make sense to argue with you. You have no idea what are you talking about. Unless IBM mainframes are now classified as "cheapo"....
you would be better off to realize how irrelevant your linux fanboying balderdash is in this topic and the forum overall, but anyway, you do realize, that not all machines, classified as servers are "IBM mainframes", right? next, what's percentage of all servers, where linux is installed are "IBM mainframes"? what's percentage of all servers, where linux is installed are cheap web servers, assembled of commodity hardware? why you neglect the latter, where they are the main base for linux as a server OS? neglecting that and seeing only what you want to see, you overlook the reasons of why exactly linux dominates there. maybe it's superior to IBM's AIX? :lol: so that is why those mainframes have it instead of AIX?
Show-off things like IBM mainframes, supercomputers etc are niche. they constitute a tiny portion of linux installations on servers. and even there, linux is the choice because of cutting costs, - spend more on HW, in expense of crappier SW. which linux is, compared to any corporative UNIX or Windows. and even there, the linux of choice is RHEL - the most corporate (and thus least crappy) linux.
linux is mostly installed (by the number of installations) on cheap web servers. the more enterprise the less there is linux over there. "somehow". linux is used on those web servers because of its free (as in beer) status. just recently read an interesting article, about a small business, providing cloud storage, the article is from 2011 but I doubt anything changed with that respect. that article emphasizes, several times, starting from the very title, how they keep spending costs low for remaining profitable. they use commodity hardware, of course they have no alternative to using linux and that what I was talking about - being used because of being "cent OS" is an advantage as well, some kind, but it comes with its price - low quality. and this makes this "advantage" somewhat dubious. of course, if I don't have money, I go cheap, but is it a reason to brag about?

In an attempt to keep it somewhat on topic, I'll say, that by the way, this usage - for the businesses, as in the article, "budget" server scenario, - is a good target for ReactOS, in theory, for future, at least, should it bring at least somewhat of functionality that server variants of Windows do. this could be attractive for many. but of course, it would be cool only per se, there won't be huge donations from happy users, OpenBSD knows that for sure.
jcalvarez
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Re: Goodbye for a while

Post by jcalvarez »

dizt3mp3r wrote: Tue Aug 13, 2019 10:40 pm
jcalvarez wrote: Tue Aug 13, 2019 12:40 pm So it is a moving target. Windows evolves, adds new APIs etc, and you need to follow.
You need to research what ReactOS is aiming to achieve.

Read - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReactOS
OK, from your link (underscores are mine):

ReactOS is a free and open-source operating system for amd64/i686 personal computers intended to be binary-compatible with computer programs and device drivers made for Windows Server 2003 _and later versions_.[7][8] ReactOS has been noted as a potential open-source drop-in replacement for Windows[9][10][11] and for its information on undocumented Windows APIs.[12]
......
Mission

As formerly stated on the official Web site,
“The main goal of the ReactOS project is to provide an operating system which is _binary compatible with Windows_ ... such that people accustomed to the familiar user interface of Windows would find using ReactOS straightforward. _The ultimate goal of ReactOS is to allow you to remove Windows and install ReactOS without the end user noticing the change_.[20]"

Still think it is a moving target based on what I read.
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dizt3mp3r
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Re: Goodbye for a while

Post by dizt3mp3r »

Focus on the Windows Server 2003.
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