ResearchReactOS - the free Windows at last?
Neal Stephenson in his ground-breaking essay "In the Beginning was the Command Line" asserted that it is the destiny of all technology to become free. And history has shown that to be eventually true. The free Unix was realized in Linux and BSD. MacIntosh users had their day with the Darwin project. Solaris begat Open Solaris, and it has had wide reception in the few years of it's existence. Windows platform users, frustrated at being over a barrel with nowhere to turn, have tried the other free systems with limited success. Yes, Linux is good and Linux is strong, but Linux is and will always be a free Unix.
The ReactOS project is an attempt to develop a free and open source operating system that is binary-compatible with Microsoft Windows NT/XP and Windows Server 2003 applications and drivers. Though the project is currently in the alpha development stage and has it's share of kinks to work out, many Windows programs already work well on the platform. While the ReactOS kernel has been written from scratch, the userland is mostly based on the Wine (windows emulator) for Unix operating systems. Here, then, is a way in which open source may eventually be shown to indirectly have helped the Windows community; the General Public License has already stood the test of time with Linux for a number of years, and Linux has forged ahead through the Wine project to emulate much of Windows compatibility already.
Windows users express seething frustration with the Linux community. Those penguins are just too gosh-darn smug! All they ever say is "read the man pages" and "Linux isn't the same, it's better!" Meanwhile the Windows user, driven from their home territory by the hassles of proprietary software, is lost in the Unix world in the maze of cryptic command line functions and endless text-mode tweaking. They want something that just works; what they haven't usually thought to ask for until it's too late is that they want something that just works like Windows.
The screen-shots of the brave little ReactOS system in action so far give much promise. There are some Windows applications running on ReactOS, including Photoshop and Office, games such as UnReal Tournament and Quake. ReactOS feels familar to a Windows user; it has it's own file explorer and it's own web browser, substituting for Windows Explorer and Internet Explorer. Configurations are done through a desktop settings menu and with an "add/remove programs" dialog.
The exciting thing is that here is a chance to fix all of the problems that has plagued Windows for years. ReactOS has so far shown itself to be secure, at least. If they keep their Internet browser well-maintained, we could at last have a Windows-style browser that doesn't make web developers scream and pull their hair out for a change! If viruses that attack Windows aren't able to attack ReactOS, then that fixes another problem; considering that something like 98% of the viruses out there depend on a Windows host to spread themselves, the wide adoption of ReactOS could mean the end of computer security problems as we know them.
The ReactOS project is still in their alpha stage, and the system feels like it. As of this writing, it is at release 0.3. Their efforts have been hampered by a voluntary code audit which they undertook when concerns arose that they might not have a good defense should they be accused of copying Microsoft code, and so they have instituted a "clean-room reverse-engineer" policy, in which no developer is even allowed on the project who has laid eyeballs on a single line of Microsoft-licensed code. Between this and their smart choice of the GNU General Public License, the Holy Shield of free software, they are positioned to deal well with the inevitable legal squabbles that will come.
Now all they have to do is get the word out, and get the support.