16 Jan
2010
16 Jan
'10
9:44 p.m.
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