Hello Javier,
Thank you for your answer. Here's what I think about what you
said.
Quoting myself:
Hell, it would probably be easier for a business to switch from NT6 to GNU/Linux than to go back to NT5.
I was pretty serious. :)
Sorry if it wasn't clear, but by that I meant that developers
would never go back to an old architecture, even if it's made Open
Source.
We are talking about Open Source NT5 (legacy, maintened by a few
talented developers, likely to be usable in a few years) vs. Open
Source GNU/Linux (modern, maintened by hundreds of talented
developers and supported by companies, used today to run the web).
There's no game. It's not like developers are gonna pick up again
an old (and, honestly, bad!) architecture just because it is made
free, when *here and now* we already have a better alternative.
This is obviously going to get worse as time passes, because that
one last NT5 machine I mentioned in my previous email will be
eventually eliminated too.
The only game ReactOS is likely to be able to compete on is NT6, or whatever NT will be mainstream when ReactOS will be ready for the real world. People need to be able to build or buy a new PC, load a ReactOS image and start working right away with their usual Windows software and tools. No one wants to live the whole NT6 migration again, let alone living it in reverse. And I'm not only speaking about office workers, but also developers.
Best regards and good luck,
---
Riccardo Paolo Bestetti
"companies and such support NT5?"
where "support NT5", i meant "drop support for NT5", sorry
On Tue, May 17, 2016 at 4:43 PM, Javier Agustėn Fernāndez Arroyo <elhoir@gmail.com> wrote:
And why does few developers, companies and such support NT5? Because MS dropped support for those systems. But if ReactOS revives that support, maybe companies will support us.
On Mon, May 16, 2016 at 10:22 PM, Riccardo Paolo Bestetti <riccardo.kyogre@live.it> wrote:
I'd like to drop my two cents, just because I really believe in this project's filosofy. Since things have gotten pretty hot in the past, especially when someone who is not a developer intervened in a discussion, let me apprise you that my only intention it to bring in the point of view of a potential user that really wants to see ReactOS happen and isn't emotionally attached to the work that has been done.
The reality is that very very few manufacturers and developers still support NT5 and all of them are going to drop support in the next few years. This is just a fact. NT5 is legacy software and there's nothing no one can do about that.
I've followed this project and this mailing list for the past five years and in this time I've upgraded all of the computer systems of my father's business to Windows 7 and then to Windows 10, because all the pieces of software they run dropped support for NT5, one after another. They still have a single machine in the whole building running Windows XP, for legacy software, and honestly they don't use it very often. In my school, pretty much the same. And even if someone, for whatever reason, intends to run NT5 for 10 more years, why should (s)he re-setup all the systems again to run ReactOS instead of keeping Windows XP?
The point is, you can either implement the architecture that runs all of the computer in building, or the architecture that runs that one legacy machine. And even that would happen if and only if you can achieve 100% compatibility with all of NT5 and Windows XP bugs and quirks and give people a really good reason to reinstall the OS on such machines, and sorry that's just not gonna happen.
I get why some of you may want to stick to NT5, but you have to be aware that if you do that ReactOS will never be used in the real world. No reason to stick to NT5 is good enough, since no one out there needs or wants NT5. Hell, it would probably be easier for a business to switch from NT6 to GNU/Linux than to go back to NT5.
Again, these are just the two cents of a guy that works in the field.
Best regards,
--- Riccardo Paolo Bestetti