This is an accepted version of this page
108-467: ReactOS is a free and open-source operating system for i586 / amd64 personal computers intended to be binary-compatible with computer programs and device drivers developed for Windows Server 2003 and later versions of Microsoft Windows. ReactOS has been noted as a potential open-source drop-in replacement for Windows and for its information on undocumented Windows APIs . ReactOS has been in development since 1996. As of April 2024, it
216-423: A Network World review of ReactOS v0.3.17 noted "It's just like running Windows 2000" and praised the application package manager , a feature the original Windows is missing. In August 2018, Jesse Smith from DistroWatch Weekly reviewed ReactOS v0.4.9, reporting that it suffered from limited hardware support and that it tended to lock up under load. He concluded: "[it] should be used with caution and probably not as
324-494: A free software law in January 2006. Decree No. 3,390 mandated all government agencies to migrate to free software over a two-year period. Publiccode.eu is a campaign launched demanding a legislation requiring that publicly financed software developed for the public sector be made publicly available under a Free and Open Source Software licence. If it is public money, it should be public code as well. The French Gendarmerie and
432-422: A lack of corporate sponsors and partners had rendered the project harmless to Microsoft. Echoing this, Thom Holwerda of OSNews in 2009 categorized ReactOS under a family of hobby operating systems maintained only by small groups of developers working in their spare time, lacking the financial support of more mainstream operating systems and the legacy of formerly mainstream ones such as RISC OS . In October 2015,
540-590: A main, day-to-day operating system" The ReactOS Project won on the annual Seliger Youth Forum "The Best Presentation" award with 100,000 Russian rubles ($ 2700) in 2011, attended by Alexander Rechitskiy, one of the development team members. ReactOS was a featured project on SourceForge for the weeks beginning on 27 February 2012, 25 April 2013, and several others. It was Project of the Month on SourceForge for June 2013 and February 2019. Free and open-source software Free and open-source software ( FOSS )
648-606: A niche role outside of the mainstream of private software development. However the success of FOSS Operating Systems such as Linux, BSD and the companies based on FOSS such as Red Hat , has changed the software industry's attitude and there has been a dramatic shift in the corporate philosophy concerning its development. Users of FOSS benefit from the Four Essential Freedoms to make unrestricted use of, and to study, copy, modify, and redistribute such software with or without modification. If they would like to change
756-418: A policy where reimplementation based on disassembled code must be written by someone other than the person having disassembled and examined the original code. ReactOS clarified its Intellectual Property Policy Statement requirements on clean room reverse engineering to avoid potential infringement of United States law. An internal source code audit was conducted to ensure that only clean room reverse engineering
864-432: A post-work society. He argues that the combination of a manipulation of intellectual property law and private property to make goods available to the public and a thorough blend between labor and fun make the free software movement a communist economy . Since its inception, there is an ongoing contention between the many FLOSS organizations ( FSF , OSI , Debian , Mozilla Foundation , Apache Foundation , etc.) within
972-454: A practical question rather than an ethical dilemma – non-free software is not the best solution but nonetheless a solution. The free software movement views free software as a moral imperative: that proprietary software should be rejected, and that only free software should be developed and taught in order to make computing technology beneficial to the general public. Although the movements have differing values and goals, collaborations between
1080-718: A remote X server instead of a local display. The Tango Desktop Project initiative provides open-source design guidelines and resources (as icons ) for applications on desktop environments . FreeType is an open-source software development library , used to render text on to bitmaps and provides support for other font-related operations. The KernelEx project is a Windows-API extension and compatibility layer project, which provides open-source implementations of some Windows-APIs. Other contributing projects are MinGW , SYSLINUX , adns , ICU , GraphApp, Ext2 , GNU FreeFont , DejaVu fonts , and Liberation fonts . Forks based on ReactOS exist: Various people have acknowledged ReactOS and
1188-581: A single unified term that could refer to both concepts, although Richard Stallman argues that it fails to be neutral unlike the similar term; "Free/Libre and Open Source Software" (FLOSS). Richard Stallman 's Free Software Definition , adopted by the FSF, defines free software as a matter of liberty, not price, and that which upholds the Four Essential Freedoms. The earliest known publication of this definition of his free software definition
SECTION 10
#17327916569781296-419: A stall at software-related conferences to raise awareness of software freedom. This is seen as important since people who receive free software, but who are not aware that it is free software, will later accept a non-free replacement or will add software that is not free software. A lot of lobbying work has been done against software patents and expansions of copyright law . Other lobbying focuses directly on
1404-405: A variety of FOSS projects, including both free software and open-source. Free software movement The free software movement is a social movement with the goal of obtaining and guaranteeing certain freedoms for software users , namely the freedoms to run, study, modify, and share copies of software. Software which meets these requirements, The Four Essential Freedoms of Free Software ,
1512-567: A €30,000 funding campaign was started to finance additional development projects. At the end of the year, approximately 50% of the funding goal was achieved and it was decided to continue the funding campaign without deadlines. The money went to ReactOS Deutschland e. V. . As the tax law in Germany for this form of a registered voluntary association ( Eingetragener Verein ) makes it problematic to pay developers directly; indirect possibilities like stipends were evaluated. When ReactOS
1620-469: Is a serious concern in the FLOSS domain due to increased complexity of license compatibility considerations which limits and complicates source code reuse between FLOSS projects. The OSI and the FSF maintain their own lists of dozens of existing and acceptable FLOSS licenses. There is an agreement among most that the creation of new licenses should be minimized and those created should be made compatible with
1728-465: Is not easy to raise money for free software projects. The free software movement champions copyleft licensing schema (often pejoratively called " viral licenses "). In its strongest form, copyleft mandates that any works derived from copyleft-licensed software must also carry a copyleft license, so the license spreads from work to work like a computer virus might spread from machine to machine. Stallman has previously stated his opposition to describing
1836-650: Is primarily written in C , with some elements, such as ReactOS Explorer and the sound stack, written in C++ . The project compiles using both MinGW and Microsoft Visual Studio , and contributes to the development of the build systems used through the submission of patches to its components. The developers aim to make the kernel and usermode application programming interface (API) more compatible with Windows NT version 5.2 ( Windows Server 2003 ) and to add support for more applications and hardware, with plans to target newer versions of Windows as development matures. DirectX support
1944-437: Is reinforced by fact that majority of OSI-approved licenses and self-avowed open-source programs are also compatible with the free software formalisms and vice versa. While free and open source software are often linked together, they offer two separate ideas and values. Richard Stallman has referred to open source as " a non-movement ", as it " does not campaign for anything ". "Open source" addresses software being open as
2052-526: Is software piracy. Promotion of adoption of FOSS is essential however it comes with problems of proprietary anti competition software practices including indulging in bribing and corruption by government departments. Pakistan works on the introduction of usage of open type basis of source Solutions in the curricula in schools and colleges. This is because of FOSS uniqueness in terms of political, democratic and social varieties of aspect regarding information communication and technology. In
2160-407: Is software that is available under a license that grants the right to use, modify, and distribute the software, modified or not, to everyone free of charge. The public availability of the source code is, therefore, a necessary but not sufficient condition. FOSS is an inclusive umbrella term for free software and open-source software . FOSS is in contrast to proprietary software , where the software
2268-450: Is still considered feature-incomplete alpha software , and is therefore recommended by the developers only for evaluation and testing purposes. However, many Windows applications are working, such as Adobe Reader 9.3, GIMP 2.6, and LibreOffice 5.4. ReactOS is primarily written in C , with some elements, such as ReactOS File Explorer , written in C++ . The project partially implements Windows API functionality and has been ported to
SECTION 20
#17327916569782376-675: Is termed free software . Although drawing on traditions and philosophies among members of the 1970s hacker culture and academia, Richard Stallman formally founded the movement in 1983 by launching the GNU Project . Stallman later established the Free Software Foundation in 1985 to support the movement. The philosophy of the Free Software Movement is based on promoting collaboration between programmers and computer users. This process necessitates
2484-402: Is the willingness of programmers in the free software movement to work, often producing higher-quality than proprietary programmers, without financial compensation . In his 1998 article "The High-Tech Gift Economy", Richard Barbrook suggested that the then-nascent free software movement represented a return to the gift economy building on hobbyism and the absence of economic scarcity on
2592-534: Is today better known as Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird . Netscape's act prompted Raymond and others to look into how to bring the FSF's Free software ideas and perceived benefits to the commercial software industry. They concluded that FSF's social activism was not appealing to companies like Netscape, and looked for a way to rebrand the Free software movement to emphasize the business potential of sharing and collaborating on software source code. The new name they chose
2700-748: Is under restrictive copyright or licensing and the source code is hidden from the users. FOSS maintains the software user's civil liberty rights via the " Four Essential Freedoms " of free software. Other benefits of using FOSS include decreased software costs, increased security against malware , stability, privacy , opportunities for educational usage, and giving users more control over their own hardware. Free and open-source operating systems such as Linux distributions and descendants of BSD are widely used today, powering millions of servers , desktops , smartphones , and other devices. Free-software licenses and open-source licenses are used by many software packages today. The free software movement and
2808-406: Is undertaken through ReactX, an in-house implementation. 2D and OpenGL 3D hardware-accelerated rendering is done natively, while other drawing functionality such as Direct3D is redirected to OpenGL as a stopgap solution, mostly using Wine 's code such as WineD3D . The development progress is influenced by the size of the development team and the level of experience among them. As an estimate of
2916-587: Is used by the Open Source Initiative (OSI) to determine whether a software license qualifies for the organization's insignia for open-source software . The definition was based on the Debian Free Software Guidelines , written and adapted primarily by Bruce Perens . Perens did not base his writing on the Four Essential Freedoms of free software from the Free Software Foundation , which were only later available on
3024-451: Is where people get the misconception of "free": there is no wrong in programmers' requesting payment for a proposed project, or charging for copies of free software. Restricting and controlling the user's decisions on use is the actual violation of freedom. Stallman defends that in some cases, monetary incentive is not necessary for motivation since the pleasure in expressing creativity is a reward in itself. Conversely, Stallman admits that it
3132-583: The AMD64 processor architecture . ReactOS, as part of the FOSS ecosystem, re-uses and collaborates with many other FOSS projects, most notably the Wine project, which presents a Windows compatibility layer for Unix-like operating systems. Around 1996, a group of free and open-source software developers started a project called FreeWin95 to implement a clone of Windows 95 . The project stalled in discussions on
3240-597: The French National Assembly utilize the open source operating system Linux . Gov.uk keeps a list of "key components, tools and services that have gone into the construction of GOV.UK". Free Software events happening all around the world connects people to increase visibility for Free software projects and foster collaborations. The free software movement has been extensively analyzed using economic methodologies, including perspectives from heterodox economics . Of particular interest to economists
3348-711: The GNU GPL as "viral". These licensing terms can only be enforced through asserting copyrights. Critics of copyleft licensing challenge the idea that restricting modifications is in line with the free software movement's emphasis on various "freedoms", especially when alternatives like MIT , BSD , and Apache licenses are more permissive. Proponents enjoy the assurance that copylefted work cannot usually be incorporated into non-free software projects. They emphasize that copyleft licenses may not attach for all uses and that in any case, developers can simply choose not to use copyleft-licensed software. FLOSS license proliferation
ReactOS - Misplaced Pages Continue
3456-611: The UniATA project provides Serial ATA drivers for ReactOS. The project has also experimented with using the FullFAT library in its rewrite of its FAT Installable File System . ReactOS makes use of the USB stack from Haiku both as a reference and as a foundation for its USB support. Mesa 3D provides OpenGL rendering. ReactOS's network stack is built on the TCP portion of OSKit's port of
3564-738: The United Space Alliance , which manages the computer systems for the International Space Station (ISS), regarding why they chose to switch from Windows to Linux on the ISS. In 2017, the European Commission stated that "EU institutions should become open source software users themselves, even more than they already are" and listed open source software as one of the nine key drivers of innovation, together with big data , mobility, cloud computing and
3672-559: The Win32 API . While Wine's NTDLL , USER32 , KERNEL32 , GDI32 , and ADVAPI32 components cannot be used directly by ReactOS due to architectural differences, code snippets of them and other parts can be shared between both projects. The kernel is developed by ReactOS separately as Wine relies here on existing Unix-like kernels. Separately, the experimental Arwinss branch was created as an alternative means to improve USER32 and GDI32 support through an alternative implementation of
3780-610: The hacker community at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory , announced the GNU project , saying that he had become frustrated with the effects of the change in culture of the computer industry and its users. Software development for the GNU operating system began in January 1984, and the Free Software Foundation (FSF) was founded in October 1985. An article outlining the project and its goals
3888-494: The internet of things . In 2020, the European Commission adopted its Open Source Strategy 2020-2023 , including encouraging sharing and reuse of software and publishing Commission's source code as key objectives. Among concrete actions there is also to set up an Open Source Programme Office in 2020 and in 2022 it launched its own FOSS repository https://code.europa.eu/ . In 2021, the Commission Decision on
3996-609: The open-source software movement are online social movements behind widespread production, adoption and promotion of FOSS, with the former preferring to use the terms FLOSS , free or libre. "Free and open-source software" (FOSS) is an umbrella term for software that is simultaneously considered both free software and open-source software . The precise definition of the terms "free software" and "open-source software" applies them to any software distributed under terms that allow users to use, modify, and redistribute said software in any manner they see fit, without requiring that they pay
4104-407: The 0.4 release. The flexible funding campaign had a goal of $ 50,000 with additional stretch goals beyond that. Development of ReactOS Community Edition would be community-centric, with ReactOS users voting and funding to decide which software and hardware drivers the project will aim to support. On 1 June 2014, the flexible crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo ended, raising $ 25,141 for the development of
4212-638: The EU. These recommendations are to be taken into account later in the same year in Commission's proposal of the "Interoperable Europe Act" . While copyright is the primary legal mechanism that FOSS authors use to ensure license compliance for their software, other mechanisms such as legislation, patents, and trademarks have implications as well. In response to legal issues with patents and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA),
4320-706: The FOSS ecosystem, several projects decided against upgrading to GPLv3. For instance the Linux kernel , the BusyBox project, AdvFS , Blender , and the VLC media player decided against adopting the GPLv3. Apple , a user of GCC and a heavy user of both DRM and patents, switched the compiler in its Xcode IDE from GCC to Clang , which is another FOSS compiler but is under a permissive license . LWN speculated that Apple
4428-653: The Free Software Foundation released version 3 of its GNU General Public License (GNU GPLv3) in 2007 that explicitly addressed the DMCA and patent rights. After the development of the GNU GPLv3 in 2007, the FSF (as the copyright holder of many pieces of the GNU system) updated many of the GNU programs' licenses from GPLv2 to GPLv3. On the other hand, the adoption of the new GPL version was heavily discussed in
ReactOS - Misplaced Pages Continue
4536-431: The Free Software Movement and Open Source Initiative have taken place when it comes to practical projects. By 2005, Richard Glass considered the differences to be a "serious fracture" but "vitally important to those on both sides of the fracture" and "of little importance to anyone else studying the movement from a software engineering perspective" since they have had "little effect on the field". Eric Raymond criticises
4644-689: The GSoC 2011, ReactOS mentored a student project which integrated lwIP into the network stack. Between 2007 and 2015, Russian ReactOS contributors representing the ReactOS Foundation made efforts at lobbying the Russian federal government. As of April 2019, these efforts have not yielded government support for ReactOS, and the Russia-based ReactOS Foundation has been dissolved since November 2015. On 1 May 2012,
4752-469: The Internet. Gabriella Coleman has emphasized the importance of accreditation, respect, and honour within the free software community as a form of compensation for contributions to projects, over and against financial motivations. The Swedish Marxian economist Johan Söderberg has argued that the free software movement represents a complete alternative to capitalism that may be expanded to create
4860-580: The ReactOS kernel that are unlikely to result from a clean room reimplementation. He suggests that the project took source code from the Windows Research Kernel, which was licensed to universities and has been leaked multiple times. Internal data structures and variable names have the exact same name in both ReactOS and the research kernel. Starting in 2006, the ReactOS project participated in several Google Summers of Code . For example, in
4968-666: The ReactOS project from 16 to 21 August 2018 and from 15 to 20 August 2019 in Berlin respectively. The following is a non-exhaustive list of commands that are supported by the ReactOS Command Prompt . Presently, ReactOS has active development in: Czech , English , Dutch , Finnish , French , German , Hebrew , Hungarian , Indonesian , Italian , Japanese , Mandarin Chinese , Norwegian , Polish , Russian , Spanish , Swedish , Thai , Ukrainian . ReactOS
5076-596: The United States, there have been efforts to pass legislation at the state level encouraging the use of free software by state government agencies. On January 11, 2022, two bills were shown on the New Hampshire legislating floor. The first bill called "HB 1273" was introduced by Democratic New Hampshire representative Eric Gallager, the bill prioritized "replacing proprietary software used by state agencies with free software." Gallager stated that to an extent,
5184-564: The Win32 API. Whereas ReactOS's original Win32 subsystem was closely modeled after its equivalent in Windows, Arwinss combines the architecture of that subsystem with the corresponding implementation in Wine. To this end, Arwinss uses Wine's GDI32 and USER32 libraries with few changes to take fuller advantage of Wine's existing software compatibility. Arwinss also allows the user to optionally use
5292-402: The actual causes of the many issues with Linux on notebooks such as the unnecessary power consumption. Mergers have affected major open-source software. Sun Microsystems (Sun) acquired MySQL AB , owner of the popular open-source MySQL database, in 2008. Oracle in turn purchased Sun in January 2010, acquiring their copyrights, patents, and trademarks. Thus, Oracle became the owner of both
5400-424: The attention of Microsoft , Peru, whose general manager wrote a letter to Villanueva. His response received worldwide attention and is seen as a classic piece of argumentation favouring use of free software in governments. Uruguay has a sanctioned law requiring that the state give priority to free software. It also requires that information be exchanged in open formats . The Government of Venezuela implemented
5508-423: The audit was completed, specific details were not made public, as it was only an internal effort to ensure compliance with the project's own policies. Also, the 2004 leaked Windows source code was not seen as legal risk for ReactOS, as the trade secret was considered indefensible in court due to broad spread. Axel Rietschin, who is a kernel engineer at Microsoft, claimed that he recognized some specific bits in
SECTION 50
#17327916569785616-470: The author(s) of the software a royalty or fee for engaging in the listed activities. Although there is an almost complete overlap between free-software licenses and open-source-software licenses, there is a strong philosophical disagreement between the advocates of these two positions. The terminology of FOSS was created to be a neutral on these philosophical disagreements between the Free Software Foundation (FSF) and Open Source Initiative (OSI) and have
5724-482: The belief that it is immoral to prohibit or prevent people from exercising these freedoms, and that they are required in creating a community where software users can help each other and have control over their technology. Regarding proprietary software , some believe that it is not strictly immoral, citing increased profitability in the business models available for proprietary software, along with technical features and convenience. The Free Software Foundation espouses
5832-483: The best design principles found in the Windows NT architecture ." In his column for Free Software Magazine , David Sugar noted in 2006 that ReactOS would allow the use of applications depending on older versions of Windows whose APIs have been deprecated. He also recognized its potential to expand the total deployed base of free software, and as a resource for developers wanting to know undocumented Windows APIs in
5940-453: The board of directors. In 2015, the foundation was liquidated. In order to avoid copyright prosecution, ReactOS had to be expressly completely distinct and non- derivative from Windows, a goal that needed very careful work. A claim was made on 17 January 2006 by developer Hartmut Birr on the ReactOS developers mailing list (ros-dev) that ReactOS contained code derived from disassembling Microsoft Windows. The code that Birr disputed involved
6048-463: The claim triggered a negative reaction from the free software community : in particular, Wine barred several inactive developers from providing contributions and formal high level cooperation between the two projects remained difficult as of 2006. In a statement on its website, ReactOS cited differing legal definitions of what constitutes clean-room reverse engineering as a cause for the conflict. To avoid potential litigation, companies sometimes enact
6156-499: The community edition, and the voting process to support hardware and software was started shortly thereafter. The ReactOS project organized a hackfest from 7 to 12 August 2015, in the German city of Aachen . The Hackfest resulted in many features being added to ReactOS. The second hackfest was organized by the ReactOS project from 14 to 18 August 2017, in the German city of Cologne . The third and fourth hackfests were organized by
6264-434: The concept of freely distributed software and universal access to an application's source code . A Microsoft executive publicly stated in 2001 that "Open-source is an intellectual property destroyer. I can't imagine something that could be worse than this for the software business and the intellectual-property business." Companies have indeed faced copyright infringement issues when embracing FOSS. For many years FOSS played
6372-502: The copyright law was extended to computer programs in the United States —previously, computer programs could be considered ideas, procedures, methods, systems, and processes, which are not copyrightable. Early on, closed-source software was uncommon until the mid-1970s to the 1980s, when IBM implemented in 1983 an "object code only" policy, no longer distributing source code. In 1983, Richard Stallman , longtime member of
6480-458: The course of writing portable applications. PC Magazine columnist John C. Dvorak remarked in 2008 that the Windows NT architecture had remained largely unchanged, making it an ideal candidate for cloning, and believed that ReactOS could be "a bigger threat than Linux to Microsoft's dominance". In response to Dvorak's column, ZDNet technology journalist Dana Blankenhorn noted in 2008 that
6588-399: The design of the system. While FreeWin95 had started out with high expectations, there still had not been any builds released to the public by the end of 1997. As a result, the project members, led by then coordinator Jason Filby, joined together to revive the project. The revived project sought to duplicate the functionality of Windows NT . In creating the new project, a new name, ReactOS ,
SECTION 60
#17327916569786696-494: The effort required to implement Windows 7 , Microsoft employed 1,000 or so developers, organized into 25 teams, with each team averaging 40 developers. As of 2 September 2011, in the ReactOS entry in Ohloh , the page followed through the "Very large, active development team" link lists 33 developers who have contributed over a 12-month period and a cumulative total of 104 present and former users who have contributed code to
6804-742: The existence of FOSS in China has been important in challenging the presence of Microsoft , which Guangnan Ni, a member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering stated, "The monopoly of (Microsoft Windows) is even more powerful in China than other places in the world". Yi Zhou, a professor of mathematics at Fudan University , has also alleged that, "Government procurement of FLOSS for a number of years in China has compelled Microsoft to cut its prices of Office software substantially" Government of India had issued Policy on Adoption of Open Source Software for Government of India in 2015 to drive uptake within
6912-498: The free software movement, with the main conflicts centered around the organization's needs for compromise and pragmatism rather than adhering to founding values and philosophies. The Open Source Initiative (OSI) was founded in February 1998 by Eric Raymond and Bruce Perens to promote the term " open-source software " as an alternative term for free software . The OSI aimed to address the perceived shortcomings and ambiguity of
7020-443: The freedoms of free software. According to Stallman, "The only thing in the software field that is worse than an unauthorised copy of a proprietary program, is an authorised copy of the proprietary program because this does the same harm to its whole community of users, and in addition, usually the developer, the perpetrator of this evil, profits from it." Some supporters of the free software movement take up public speaking , or host
7128-552: The function BadStack in syscall.S, as well as other unspecified items. Comparing this function to disassembled binaries from Windows XP , Birr argued that the BadStack function was simply copy-pasted from Windows XP, given that they were identical. Alex Ionescu, the author of the code, asserted that while the Windows XP binary in question was indeed disassembled and studied, the code was not merely copy-pasted, but reimplemented;
7236-562: The functionality of software they can bring about changes to the code and, if they wish, distribute such modified versions of the software or often − depending on the software's decision making model and its other users − even push or request such changes to be made via updates to the original software. Manufacturers of proprietary, closed-source software are sometimes pressured to building in backdoors or other covert, undesired features into their software. Instead of having to trust software vendors, users of FOSS can inspect and verify
7344-416: The goal of developing the most efficient software for its users or use-cases while proprietary software is typically meant to generate profits . Furthermore, in many cases more organizations and individuals contribute to such projects than to proprietary software. It has been shown that technical superiority is typically the primary reason why companies choose open source software. According to Linus's law
7452-567: The government charged that bundled software was anticompetitive. While some software was still being provided without monetary cost and license restriction, there was a growing amount of software that was only at a monetary cost with restricted licensing. In the 1970s and early 1980s, some parts of the software industry began using technical measures (such as distributing only binary copies of computer programs ) to prevent computer users from being able to use reverse engineering techniques to study and customize software they had paid for. In 1980,
7560-544: The government. With the vision to transform India as a Software Product Nation, National Policy on Software Products-2019 was approved by the Government. Free and Open Source Software (Foss) is crucial for countries such as Pakistan which is set up by Union of Information Technology. For the case of Pakistan, Pakistan Software Export Board (PSEB) aids in the creation and advocate of FOSS usage in various government departments in addition to curbing illegality of copying that
7668-491: The historical potential of an " economy of abundance " for the new digital world , FOSS may lay down a plan for political resistance or show the way towards a potential transformation of capitalism . According to Yochai Benkler , Jack N. and Lillian R. Berkman Professor for Entrepreneurial Legal Studies at Harvard Law School , free software is the most visible part of a new economy of commons-based peer production of information, knowledge, and culture. As examples, he cites
7776-451: The implications of having a viable open-source drop-in replacement for Windows. A 2004 article and interview of the German weekly magazine Der Spiegel describes ReactOS as directed at Windows users who want to renounce use of proprietary commercial software without having to switch to Linux. DistroWatch , a Linux distribution 's monitoring Web site, also lists ReactOS and describes it as "a free and open-source operating system based on
7884-485: The level of interest in a particular project. However, unlike close-sourced software, improvements can be made by anyone who has the motivation, time and skill to do so. A common obstacle in FOSS development is the lack of access to some common official standards, due to costly royalties or required non-disclosure agreements (e.g., for the DVD-Video format). There is often less certainty of FOSS projects gaining
7992-545: The more people who can see and test a set of code, the more likely any flaws will be caught and fixed quickly. However, this does not guarantee a high level of participation. Having a grouping of full-time professionals behind a commercial product can in some cases be superior to FOSS. Furthermore, publicized source code might make it easier for hackers to find vulnerabilities in it and write exploits. This however assumes that such malicious hackers are more effective than white hat hackers which responsibly disclose or help fix
8100-477: The most popular proprietary database and the most popular open-source database. Oracle's attempts to commercialize the open-source MySQL database have raised concerns in the FOSS community. Partly in response to uncertainty about the future of MySQL, the FOSS community forked the project into new database systems outside of Oracle's control. These include MariaDB , Percona , and Drizzle . All of these have distinct names; they are distinct projects and cannot use
8208-493: The network stack in FreeBSD , along with an internally developed implementation for packet-oriented protocols like IP . Later, lwIP was integrated into the ReactOS network stack. The ReactOS and the Wine projects share the goal to run binary Windows software natively and can therefore share many dependencies and development. ReactOS uses portions of the Wine project so that it can benefit from Wine's progress in implementing
8316-640: The open source licensing and reuse of Commission software (2021/C 495 I/01) was adopted, under which, as a general principle, the European Commission may release software under EUPL or another FOSS license, if more appropriate. There are exceptions though. In May 2022, the Expert group on the Interoperability of European Public Services came published 27 recommendations to strengthen the interoperability of public administrations across
8424-544: The parties stipulated that Google would pay no damages. Oracle appealed to the Federal Circuit , and Google filed a cross-appeal on the literal copying claim. By defying ownership regulations in the construction and use of information—a key area of contemporary growth —the Free/Open Source Software (FOSS) movement counters neoliberalism and privatization in general. By realizing
8532-518: The principle that all software needs free documentation, as programmers should have the ability to update manuals to reflect modifications made to the software. Within the movement, the FLOSS Manuals foundation specializes in providing such documentation. The core work of the free software movement is focused on software development. The free software movement also rejects proprietary software, refusing to install software that does not give them
8640-542: The project via Apache Subversion since its inception. In his presentation at Hackmeeting 2009 in Milan, ReactOS developer Michele C. noted that most of the developers learn about Windows architecture while working on ReactOS and have no prior knowledge. While ReactOS targets mainly the x86 / AMD64 PC platform, an effort to port to the ARM architecture was at one point "under way", while it did not produce much functionality and
8748-420: The proposed legislation will help distinguish "free software" and "open-source software", this will also put these two into state regulation. The second bill called "HB 1581" was proposed by Grafton Republican representative Lex Berezhny. The bill would've restored a requisite forcing "state agencies to use proprietary software" and as Lex put it, "when it is the most effective solution." He also said that requisite
8856-445: The reason why the functions were identical, Ionescu claimed, was because there was only one possible way to implement the function. On 27 January 2006, the developers responsible for maintaining the ReactOS code repository disabled access after a meeting was held to discuss the allegations. When approached by NewsForge , Microsoft declined to comment on the incident. Since ReactOS is a free and open-source software development project,
8964-540: The rejection of proprietary software and the promotion of free software . Stallman notes that this action would not hinder the progression of technology, as he states, "Wasteful duplication of system programming effort will be avoided. This effort can go instead into advancing the state of the art." Members of the Free Software Movement believe that all software users should have the freedoms listed in The Free Software Definition . Members hold
9072-418: The required resources and participation for continued development than commercial software backed by companies. However, companies also often abolish projects for being unprofitable, yet large companies may rely on, and hence co-develop, open source software. On the other hand, if the vendor of proprietary software ceases development, there are no alternatives; whereas with FOSS, any user who needs it still has
9180-484: The right, and the source-code, to continue to develop it themself, or pay a 3rd party to do so. As the FOSS operating system distributions of Linux has a lower market share of end users there are also fewer applications available. "We migrated key functions from Windows to Linux because we needed an operating system that was stable and reliable -- one that would give us in-house control. So if we needed to patch, adjust, or adapt, we could." Official statement of
9288-521: The source code themselves and can put trust on a community of volunteers and users. As proprietary code is typically hidden from public view, only the vendors themselves and hackers may be aware of any vulnerabilities in them while FOSS involves as many people as possible for exposing bugs quickly. FOSS is often free of charge although donations are often encouraged. This also allows users to better test and compare software. FOSS allows for better collaboration among various parties and individuals with
9396-430: The speed at which the free software movement is progressing, suggesting that temporary compromises should be made for long-term gains. Raymond argues that this could raise awareness of the software and thus increase the free software movement's influence on relevant standards and legislation. Richard Stallman, on the other hand, sees the current level of compromise as a greater cause for worry. Stallman said that this
9504-413: The surrounding required functionality to create a complete OS is already available in the greater open-source ecosystem. When available and possible, ReactOS therefore builds on and collaborates with already existing open-source projects. Conversely, projects like Wine , and formerly Captive NTFS and Longene re-use the open-source ReactOS code-base as well. On the hardware driver side, for instance
9612-440: The term "free software", as well as shifting the focus of free software from a social and ethical issue to instead emphasize open source as a superior model for software development. The latter became the view of Eric Raymond and Linus Torvalds , while Bruce Perens argued that open source was meant to popularize free software under a new brand and called for a return to basic ethical principles. Some free software advocates use
9720-411: The terms " Free and Open-Source Software " (FOSS) or "Free/Libre and Open-Source Software" (FLOSS) as a form of inclusive compromise, which brings free and open-source software advocates together to work on projects cohesively. Some users believe this is an ideal solution in order to promote both the user's freedom with the software and the pragmatic efficiency of an open-source development model. This view
9828-518: The trademarked name MySQL. In August 2010, Oracle sued Google , claiming that its use of Java in Android infringed on Oracle's copyrights and patents. In May 2012, the trial judge determined that Google did not infringe on Oracle's patents and ruled that the structure of the Java APIs used by Google was not copyrightable. The jury found that Google infringed a small number of copied files, but
9936-417: The use of Windows compatible applications from mobile devices (like smartphones , tablets ), workstations , or any other connected device. On 21 February 2014, fundraising ended short of the target amount, with $ 48,965 of $ 120,000 raised, resulting in no transferred money. In April 2014, the ReactOS project announced an Indiegogo campaign to launch ReactOS Community Edition, a version of ReactOS based on
10044-884: The use of free software by government agencies and government-funded projects. In June 1997, the Society for Study, Application, and Development of Free Software was established under the China Software Industry Association in Beijing. Through this organization, the website freesoft.cei.gov.cn was developed, though the website is currently inaccessible on IP addresses located in the United States. The use of open-source software Linux in China has moved beyond government and educational institutions and has extended to other organizations such as financial institutions, telecommunications, and public security. Several Chinese researchers and scholars have claimed that
10152-837: The vulnerabilities, that no code leaks or exfiltrations occur and that reverse engineering of proprietary code is a hindrance of significance for malicious hackers. Sometimes, FOSS is not compatible with proprietary hardware or specific software. This is often due to manufacturers obstructing FOSS such as by not disclosing the interfaces or other specifications needed for members of the FOSS movement to write drivers for their hardware - for instance as they wish customers to run only their own proprietary software or as they might benefit from partnerships. While FOSS can be superior to proprietary equivalents in terms of software features and stability, in many cases it has more unfixed bugs and missing features when compared to similar commercial software. This varies per case, and usually depends on
10260-485: The web. Perens subsequently stated that he felt Eric Raymond 's promotion of open-source unfairly overshadowed the Free Software Foundation's efforts and reaffirmed his support for free software. In the following 2000s, he spoke about open source again. From the 1950s and on through the 1980s, it was common for computer users to have the source code for all programs they used, and the permission and ability to modify it for their own use. Software , including source code,
10368-534: Was "Open-source", and quickly Bruce Perens , publisher Tim O'Reilly , Linus Torvalds, and others signed on to the rebranding. The Open Source Initiative was founded in February 1998 to encourage the use of the new term and evangelize open-source principles. While the Open Source Initiative sought to encourage the use of the new term and evangelize the principles it adhered to, commercial software vendors found themselves increasingly threatened by
10476-535: Was abandoned along with a port to PowerPC , that is no longer actively maintained. Support for the Xbox and the NEC PC-9800 , a variant IA-32 architecture, was added through the use of an architecture-specific HAL . Improved 64-bit support for ReactOS is "being worked on", however, development seems to be going slowly. While ReactOS has the aim to build a Windows-compatible kernel as open-source software, much of
10584-468: Was awarded as Project of the Month on SourceForge in June 2013, a crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter was announced in an interview with the project's coordinator, Aleksey Bragin. On 23 December 2013 the announced project was revealed as a Kickstarter campaign with the goal of US$ 120,000 was started. The Thorium Core Cloud Desktop dubbed cloud computing service would use ReactOS as core and could allow
10692-577: Was chosen. The project began development in February 1998 by creating the basis for a new NT kernel and basic drivers. The name ReactOS was coined during an IRC chat. While the term "OS" stood for operating system, the term "react" referred to the group's dissatisfaction with – and reaction to – Microsoft's monopolistic position . In 2002, the ReactOS Foundation was established in Moscow with Maxim Osowski and Aleksey Bragin as executive officers and Vladimir Bragin, Saveliy Tretiakov and Alexey Ivanov on
10800-447: Was commonly shared by individuals who used computers, often as public-domain software (FOSS is not the same as public domain software, as public domain software does not contain copyrights ). Most companies had a business model based on hardware sales, and provided or bundled software with hardware, free of charge. By the late 1960s, the prevailing business model around software was changing. A growing and evolving software industry
10908-462: Was competing with the hardware manufacturer's bundled software products; rather than funding software development from hardware revenue, these new companies were selling software directly. Leased machines required software support while providing no revenue for software, and some customers who were able to better meet their own needs did not want the costs of software bundled with hardware product costs. In United States vs. IBM , filed January 17, 1969,
11016-651: Was happening between 2012 and 2018. According to the Concord Monitor, the state of New Hampshire had an already "thriving open source software community" with a view of "live free or die" but they had difficulty getting that notion with the state. Congressmen Edgar David Villanueva and Jacques Rodrich Ackerman have been instrumental in introducing free software in Peru , with bill 1609 on "Free Software in Public Administration". The incident invited
11124-475: Was in the February 1986 edition of the FSF's now-discontinued GNU's Bulletin publication. The canonical source for the document is in the philosophy section of the GNU Project website. As of August 2017 , it is published in 40 languages. To meet the definition of "free software", the FSF requires the software's licensing respect the civil liberties / human rights of what the FSF calls the software user's " Four Essential Freedoms ". The Open Source Definition
11232-572: Was motivated partly by a desire to avoid GPLv3. The Samba project also switched to GPLv3, so Apple replaced Samba in their software suite by a closed-source, proprietary software alternative. Leemhuis criticizes the prioritization of skilled developers who − instead of fixing issues in already popular open-source applications and desktop environments − create new, mostly redundant software to gain fame and fortune. He also criticizes notebook manufacturers for optimizing their own products only privately or creating workarounds instead of helping fix
11340-528: Was published in March 1985 titled the GNU Manifesto . The manifesto included significant explanation of the GNU philosophy, Free Software Definition and " copyleft " ideas. The FSF takes the position that the fundamental issue Free software addresses is an ethical one—to ensure software users can exercise what it calls " The Four Essential Freedoms ". The Linux kernel , created by Linus Torvalds ,
11448-657: Was released as freely modifiable source code in 1991. Initially, Linux was not released under either a Free software or an Open-source software license. However, with version 0.12 in February 1992, he relicensed the project under the GNU General Public License . FreeBSD and NetBSD (both derived from 386BSD ) were released as Free software when the USL v. BSDi lawsuit was settled out of court in 1993. OpenBSD forked from NetBSD in 1995. Also in 1995, The Apache HTTP Server , commonly referred to as Apache,
11556-527: Was released under the Apache License 1.0 . In 1997, Eric Raymond published The Cathedral and the Bazaar , a reflective analysis of the hacker community and Free software principles. The paper received significant attention in early 1998, and was one factor in motivating Netscape Communications Corporation to release their popular Netscape Communicator Internet suite as Free software . This code
11664-401: Was used, and all developers were made to sign an agreement committing them to comply with the project's policies on reverse engineering. Contributors to its development were not affected by these events and all access to the software development tools was restored shortly afterward. In September 2007, with the audit nearing completion, the audit status was removed from the ReactOS homepage. Though
#977022