On the growth of the reactos project

[Samuel serapion]

Hello everyone. I find myself today thinking, as I sometimes do, about the
ReactOS problem. How come we are trying to clone the biggest and arguably
the most popular desktop OS in the world and still have such a small
community/user base?

The obvious answer to this question is that ros doesn’t do what it promises.
Indeed it does almost run a lot of windows applications... some of the time,
but that’s not the whole picture. Let us examine the typical(in my
experience) first time encounter of a random computer user with reactos.

<fanboy> Look, this is a free open source windows clone called ReactOS. It
has solitaire and runs firefox. Awesome, isn’t it?

<noob> so does it run my windows drivers and Office and COD4 and… !?

<fanboy> well…. Umm…  not really.

Let’s analyze what went wrong:

*1)      *ReactOS base distribution is fine and great, I totally like my
reactos with just a cmd window and dwnl.exe; but it’s not enough, except
perhaps for  someone that’s *extremely* motivated to do
*something*interesting with ros.
**

The solution, host a reactos distribution. I think its been proven that the
reactos community doesn’t want to host more 3rd party code in the repository
unless it’s absolutely necessary. But that doesn’t matter. We don’t need to
build firefox, mono, or anything from source.  The Windows model of software
distribution is binary. There doesn’t have to be an update manager, reactos
is just a toy(more on that later) and it needs to look useful so that people
buy into it. Maybe a nice list of packages and some checkboxes in second
stage installed with a script…



2)      Hardware support is very poor, on recent hardware it almost never
works(wild guess 75% fail rate on modern hardware) Problems range from
unsupported video cards/ros driver uses wrong/unsupported mode, wrong
storage bus, random crashes from unsupported usb devices + pcmcia
other  similar
alien buses and just random bullshit. Even if nothing manages to bring down
reactos, it of course has the wrong nic card and since usb storage doesn’t
exist there’s no chance to get a driver and see ros crash because of course
we only support a couple of drivers.

I know this can’t just be magically fixed, but we need people dedicated to
do hardware testing/debugging and provide real bug reports with traces.
(Suggestion: allow kdbg to take ownership of the screen/give it back,
provide visual console. I don’t care if it’s not a windows feature.)

3)      Who cares about all the above? Not noobs, the question they really
ask is: “Does it run XYZ?”

What is XYZ? Flagship applications. The ones everyone knows and uses,
commercial and opensource. The following, I think, are universally
recognized as very important.

a)      Firefox + Flash (this works most of the time… maybe god will kill
that mouse move bug)

b)      A recent version of Microsoft Office. (2007 would be very nice)

c)       Latest OpenOffice( imagine a make distro command that would tell
ros setup to install it automagically, wouldn’t that make testing easier…
heck we could have a super build bot that wrote documents in office and
compiled shit with gcc and took 3 days to run….)

d)      .NET Framework (atleast 2.0) (This means fixing its installer bug)

e)      Java runtime. (it installs and almost launches limewire!! Christ!!)

f)       Visual Studio 2008 (installer fails, but the c++ compiler works and
the IDE almost works!!)

g)      Recent versions of Adobe Photoshop, Dreamweaver or Flash.



Extra points:

h)      Msn Messenger (its expected by windows users)

i)        Internet Explorer (screenshots floated around at some point with
IE6, I think.. or maybe it was a dream)

j)        Virtual Box (with its drivers!) ( I just love the vm inside vm
screenshot)

k)      Nmap (only pcap driver is broken!)

l)        Silverlight (seems to install)
m)    Itunes (with ipod support)

(please dont be pricks about this list, make a poll or something if you
must, but someone has to arbitrarily set it)

The sad truth is that most of these applications are known to work to a
certain degree. However, good bug reports don’t even exist. I’m confident
that with a bit of determined effort these apps can be made to work. Atleast
we need to compile a list of whats missing in ros that is need to support
these and other important applications with real bug reports, and focus the
project... give defined tasks to noobs that stumble into the project but are
not knowledgable enought to dive into our huge code base and decide what are
the missing features/features that need work/bugs.
But really, what is the point of this email…

0.4.0 will be a milestone release(nice round number), people really want
these and other similar applications to work(perhaps they are the reasons
people still use windows). It makes sense to try and support them and would
provide a nice PR boost if 0.4.0 can honestly be said to support any or all
of the above applications.

ReactOS is a developer toy, a cute little model of windows that almost
works. If we can at least make it work for applications that most users
actually use we could maybe, oh I don’t know… spark some interest. Yes, it’s
about users, which we still won’t condone being alpha and all. But users are
the ones that get excited and twitter and facebook and blog about the little
OS that could; Excitement that will get developers exited, that will provide
testers (I’m praying for some sort of reactos error reporting service,
atleast a minidump….. atleast in usermode… support event logs…. for Christ
sakes our bug reports suck and they suck10x worse when they come from
noobs!).

Right now we are stuck in the vm, so atleast make that experience enjoyable.
There’s no need to rant about explorer, I hope…

We have to start thinking about 0.5 and making reactos “beta”, and I still
haven’t seen plans on how that’s going to happen or what exactly that means.
ReactOS development needs to speed up and get more organized….. that’s all I
have to say about that…. probably not…

[Maya Posch]

Interesting ideas, I can definitely see potential in them :)

Coincidentally, I began work on the ReactOS Synthesis project last year, 
with the intention of making a utility which would replace components in 
Windows with their ReactOS equivalents after they had been tested to be 
stable. While this project never got very far, I think that it could be 
revived as a combination of the original concept as well as the 
'distribution' concept.

Essentially it would aim to give stability to end-users, people who are 
more interested in just using an OS instead of testing it and praying it 
doesn't crash. This would be featured in stable releases, using only the 
best and most stable patches from the ReactOS trunk and branches. One'd 
also be able to 'upgrade' a Windows (XP SP3, most likely) installation 
with ReactOS components. The latter would be more experimental, the 
former more meant to give end-users an idea of what a stable ReactOS 
will be like.

I would also want to make the new installer (ROSE) part of the distribution.

Thoughts? Comments?


Maya

Samuel serapion さんは書きました:
>   Hello everyone. I find myself today thinking, as I
> sometimes do, about 
>  the ReactOS problem. How come we are trying to clone the biggest and 
>  arguably the most popular desktop OS in the world and still have such a 
>  small community/user base?
>  
>  The obvious answer to this question is that ros doesn’t do what it 
>  promises. Indeed it does almost run a lot of windows applications... 
>  some of the time, but that’s not the whole picture. Let us examine the 
>  typical(in my experience) first time encounter of a random computer user 
>  with reactos.
>  
>  <fanboy> Look, this is a free open source windows clone called ReactOS. 
>  It has solitaire and runs firefox. Awesome, isn’t it?
>  
>  <noob> so does it run my windows drivers and Office and COD4 and… !?
>  
>  <fanboy> well…. Umm…  not really.
>  
>  Let’s analyze what went wrong:
>  
>  /1)      /ReactOS base distribution is fine and great, I totally like my 
>  reactos with just a cmd window and dwnl.exe; but it’s not enough, except 
>  perhaps for  someone that’s *extremely* motivated to do /something/ 
>  interesting with ros.//
>  
>  The solution, host a reactos distribution. I think its been proven that 
>  the reactos community doesn’t want to host more 3^rd party code in the 
>  repository unless it’s absolutely necessary. But that doesn’t matter. We 
>  don’t need to build firefox, mono, or anything from source.  The Windows 
>  model of software distribution is binary. There doesn’t have to be an 
>  update manager, reactos is just a toy(more on that later) and it needs 
>  to look useful so that people buy into it. Maybe a nice list of packages 
>  and some checkboxes in second stage installed with a script…
>  
>   
>  
>  2)      Hardware support is very poor, on recent hardware it almost 
>  never works(wild guess 75% fail rate on modern hardware) Problems range 
>  from unsupported video cards/ros driver uses wrong/unsupported mode, 
>  wrong storage bus, random crashes from unsupported usb devices + pcmcia 
>  other  similar alien buses and just random bullshit. Even if nothing 
>  manages to bring down reactos, it of course has the wrong nic card and 
>  since usb storage doesn’t exist there’s no chance to get a driver and 
>  see ros crash because of course we only support a couple of drivers.
>  
>  I know this can’t just be magically fixed, but we need people dedicated 
>  to do hardware testing/debugging and provide real bug reports with 
>  traces. (Suggestion: allow kdbg to take ownership of the screen/give it 
>  back, provide visual console. I don’t care if it’s not a windows feature.)
>  
>  3)      Who cares about all the above? Not noobs, the question they 
>  really ask is: “Does it run XYZ?”
>  
>  What is XYZ? Flagship applications. The ones everyone knows and uses, 
>  commercial and opensource. The following, I think, are universally 
>  recognized as very important.
>  
>  a)      Firefox + Flash (this works most of the time… maybe god will 
>  kill that mouse move bug)
>  
>  b)      A recent version of Microsoft Office. (2007 would be very nice)
>  
>  c)       Latest OpenOffice( imagine a make distro command that would 
>  tell ros setup to install it automagically, wouldn’t that make testing 
>  easier… heck we could have a super build bot that wrote documents in 
>  office and compiled shit with gcc and took 3 days to run….)
>  
>  d)      .NET Framework (atleast 2.0) (This means fixing its installer bug)
>  
>  e)      Java runtime. (it installs and almost launches limewire!! Christ!!)
>  
>  f)       Visual Studio 2008 (installer fails, but the c++ compiler works 
>  and the IDE almost works!!)
>  
>  g)      Recent versions of Adobe Photoshop, Dreamweaver or Flash.
>  
>   
>  
>  Extra points:
>  
>  h)      Msn Messenger (its expected by windows users)
>  
>  i)        Internet Explorer (screenshots floated around at some point 
>  with IE6, I think.. or maybe it was a dream)
>  
>  j)        Virtual Box (with its drivers!) ( I just love the vm inside vm 
>  screenshot)
>  
>  k)      Nmap (only pcap driver is broken!)
>  
>  l)        Silverlight (seems to install)
>  
>  m)    Itunes (with ipod support)
>   
>  (please dont be pricks about this list, make a poll or something if you 
>  must, but someone has to arbitrarily set it)
>   
>  The sad truth is that most of these applications are known to work to a 
>  certain degree. However, good bug reports don’t even exist. I’m 
>  confident that with a bit of determined effort these apps can be made to 
>  work. Atleast we need to compile a list of whats missing in ros that is 
>  need to support these and other important applications with real bug 
>  reports, and focus the project... give defined tasks to noobs that 
>  stumble into the project but are not knowledgable enought to dive into 
>  our huge code base and decide what are the missing features/features 
>  that need work/bugs.
>  But really, what is the point of this email…
>  
>  0.4.0 will be a milestone release(nice round number), people really want 
>  these and other similar applications to work(perhaps they are the 
>  reasons people still use windows). It makes sense to try and support 
>  them and would provide a nice PR boost if 0.4.0 can honestly be said to 
>  support any or all of the above applications.
>  
>  ReactOS is a developer toy, a cute little model of windows that almost 
>  works. If we can at least make it work for applications that most users 
>  actually use we could maybe, oh I don’t know… spark some interest. Yes, 
>  it’s about users, which we still won’t condone being alpha and all. But 
>  users are the ones that get excited and twitter and facebook and blog 
>  about the little OS that could; Excitement that will get developers 
>  exited, that will provide testers (I’m praying for some sort of reactos 
>  error reporting service, atleast a minidump….. atleast in usermode… 
>  support event logs…. for Christ sakes our bug reports suck and they 
>  suck10x worse when they come from noobs!).
>  
>  Right now we are stuck in the vm, so atleast make that experience 
>  enjoyable. There’s no need to rant about explorer, I hope…
>  
>  We have to start thinking about 0.5 and making reactos “beta”, and I 
>  still haven’t seen plans on how that’s going to happen or what exactly 
>  that means. ReactOS development needs to speed up and get more 
>  organized….. that’s all I have to say about that…. probably not…
>  
>  
>  ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>  
>  _______________________________________________
>  Ros-dev mailing list
>  Ros-dev(a)reactos.org
>  http://www.reactos.org/mailman/listinfo/ros-dev

[Olaf Siejka]

You Samuel, should know best, that application functionality cannot be
isolated from general OS bugfixing. As we know, it often looks like:
application z needs functionality y that can only be implemented if
component x is rewritten and requires w to be fixed in kernel. You cannot
just "make z work", unless you wish to hackplement it.

So application or rather target-oriented development may look great on
paper, but in reality it is soon bogged down into general OS development,
that we try to do nowadays.

Finally, you should know that devs are doing here the things they want/are
interested in. How do you propose forcing them to work on something
different?

[Aleksey Bragin]

Good post, and thanks for backing me - I keep telling the same for  
years!

And, keep watching, an end to "reactos sucks" era is coming very soon.


WBR,
Aleksey Bragin.

On Jul 17, 2009, at 10:54 AM, Samuel serapion wrote:

>   Hello everyone. I find myself today thinking, as I
> sometimes do,  
>  about the ReactOS problem. How come we are trying to clone the  
>  biggest and arguably the most popular desktop OS in the world and  
>  still have such a small community/user base?
>
>  The obvious answer to this question is that ros doesn’t do what it  
>  promises. Indeed it does almost run a lot of windows  
>  applications... some of the time, but that’s not the whole picture.  
>  Let us examine the typical(in my experience) first time encounter  
>  of a random computer user with reactos.
>
>  <fanboy> Look, this is a free open source windows clone called  
>  ReactOS. It has solitaire and runs firefox. Awesome, isn’t it?
>
>  <noob> so does it run my windows drivers and Office and COD4 and… !?
>
>  <fanboy> well…. Umm…  not really.
>
>  Let’s analyze what went wrong:
>
>  1)      ReactOS base distribution is fine and great, I totally like  
>  my reactos with just a cmd window and dwnl.exe; but it’s not  
>  enough, except perhaps for  someone that’s extremely motivated to  
>  do something interesting with ros.
>  The solution, host a reactos distribution. I think its been proven  
>  that the reactos community doesn’t want to host more 3rd party code  
>  in the repository unless it’s absolutely necessary. But that  
>  doesn’t matter. We don’t need to build firefox, mono, or anything  
>  from source.  The Windows model of software distribution is binary.  
>  There doesn’t have to be an update manager, reactos is just a toy 
>  (more on that later) and it needs to look useful so that people buy  
>  into it. Maybe a nice list of packages and some checkboxes in  
>  second stage installed with a script…
>
>  2)      Hardware support is very poor, on recent hardware it almost  
>  never works(wild guess 75% fail rate on modern hardware) Problems  
>  range from unsupported video cards/ros driver uses wrong/ 
>  unsupported mode, wrong storage bus, random crashes from  
>  unsupported usb devices + pcmcia other  similar alien buses and  
>  just random bullshit. Even if nothing manages to bring down  
>  reactos, it of course has the wrong nic card and since usb storage  
>  doesn’t exist there’s no chance to get a driver and see ros crash  
>  because of course we only support a couple of drivers.
>  I know this can’t just be magically fixed, but we need people  
>  dedicated to do hardware testing/debugging and provide real bug  
>  reports with traces. (Suggestion: allow kdbg to take ownership of  
>  the screen/give it back, provide visual console. I don’t care if  
>  it’s not a windows feature.)
>  3)      Who cares about all the above? Not noobs, the question they  
>  really ask is: “Does it run XYZ?”
>  What is XYZ? Flagship applications. The ones everyone knows and  
>  uses, commercial and opensource. The following, I think, are  
>  universally recognized as very important.
>
>  a)      Firefox + Flash (this works most of the time… maybe god  
>  will kill that mouse move bug)
>  b)      A recent version of Microsoft Office. (2007 would be very  
>  nice)
>  c)       Latest OpenOffice( imagine a make distro command that  
>  would tell ros setup to install it automagically, wouldn’t that  
>  make testing easier… heck we could have a super build bot that  
>  wrote documents in office and compiled shit with gcc and took 3  
>  days to run….)
>  d)      .NET Framework (atleast 2.0) (This means fixing its  
>  installer bug)
>  e)      Java runtime. (it installs and almost launches limewire!!  
>  Christ!!)
>  f)       Visual Studio 2008 (installer fails, but the c++ compiler  
>  works and the IDE almost works!!)
>  g)      Recent versions of Adobe Photoshop, Dreamweaver or Flash.
>
>  Extra points:
>  h)      Msn Messenger (its expected by windows users)
>  i)        Internet Explorer (screenshots floated around at some  
>  point with IE6, I think.. or maybe it was a dream)
>  j)        Virtual Box (with its drivers!) ( I just love the vm  
>  inside vm screenshot)
>  k)      Nmap (only pcap driver is broken!)
>  l)        Silverlight (seems to install)
>  m)    Itunes (with ipod support)
>
>  (please dont be pricks about this list, make a poll or something if  
>  you must, but someone has to arbitrarily set it)
>
>  The sad truth is that most of these applications are known to work  
>  to a certain degree. However, good bug reports don’t even exist.  
>  I’m confident that with a bit of determined effort these apps can  
>  be made to work. Atleast we need to compile a list of whats missing  
>  in ros that is need to support these and other important  
>  applications with real bug reports, and focus the project... give  
>  defined tasks to noobs that stumble into the project but are not  
>  knowledgable enought to dive into our huge code base and decide  
>  what are the missing features/features that need work/bugs.
>  But really, what is the point of this email…
>  0.4.0 will be a milestone release(nice round number), people really  
>  want these and other similar applications to work(perhaps they are  
>  the reasons people still use windows). It makes sense to try and  
>  support them and would provide a nice PR boost if 0.4.0 can  
>  honestly be said to support any or all of the above applications.
>
>  ReactOS is a developer toy, a cute little model of windows that  
>  almost works. If we can at least make it work for applications that  
>  most users actually use we could maybe, oh I don’t know… spark some  
>  interest. Yes, it’s about users, which we still won’t condone being  
>  alpha and all. But users are the ones that get excited and twitter  
>  and facebook and blog about the little OS that could; Excitement  
>  that will get developers exited, that will provide testers (I’m  
>  praying for some sort of reactos error reporting service, atleast a  
>  minidump….. atleast in usermode… support event logs…. for Christ  
>  sakes our bug reports suck and they suck10x worse when they come  
>  from noobs!).
>
>  Right now we are stuck in the vm, so atleast make that experience  
>  enjoyable. There’s no need to rant about explorer, I hope…
>
>  We have to start thinking about 0.5 and making reactos “beta”, and  
>  I still haven’t seen plans on how that’s going to happen or what  
>  exactly that means. ReactOS development needs to speed up and get  
>  more organized….. that’s all I have to say about that…. probably not…
>
>  _______________________________________________
>  Ros-dev mailing list
>  Ros-dev(a)reactos.org
>  http://www.reactos.org/mailman/listinfo/ros-dev

[Alex]

Hello Samuel,

Friday, July 17, 2009, 10:54:34 AM, you wrote:

>   Hello everyone. I find myself today thinking, as I
> sometimes do,
>  about the ReactOS problem. 
Good post, Samuel, but it seems you are mostly concerned with
attracting users. I think that on this stage of the project it all
boils down to the Ballmer's "developers, developers, developers,
developers".

You propose to fix a lot of things, but who's gonna fix them?
Developers. Everything depends on the quality and quantity of
developers this project is able to attract.

It is indeed strange that after so many years there are so few
developers. Why is that?

It can be a "bad" attraction:
* Bad attraction: lack of effort
* Bad attraction: tough (project is not sexy enough)
* Bad attraction: many come, but of the wrong kind => bad retention,
  must ban them

Or/and "bad" retention:
* Bad retention: disappointment in the project
* Bad retention: disappointment in organization
* Bad retention: disappointment in people and group dynamics
* Bad retention: lured by corporations as soon as they got noticed

These are just items that popped up into my mind. I am sure many of
you have more reasons. We can create a poll on the forum to see what
people think about those reasons for the lack of developers.


About "this is an open-source, free project, so we have no control
over people and can't force them to do what needs to be done" – this
is simply not true. It is not a secret, that once a salary of a
developer in a company reaches a certain minimum level, money stop to
be the primary motivator. Non-tangible things become more important.

Since people come work here without pay this means they already have
the basic level of income. They can be teenagers, living off their
parents. They can be students. They can be people with day job or
people with external income sources. So the money is not the primary
motivator here (duh!).

By realizing that greater motivation comes from intangible things and
consciously focusing on them, trying to understand what they are, it
is possible to control and direct people.

Even better than the money can do.

-- 
Best regards,
 Alex                            mailto:[e-mail]

[Aleksey Bragin]

>   About "this is an open-source, free project, so
> we have no control
>  over people and can't force them to do what needs to be done" – this
>  is simply not true. It is not a secret, that once a salary of a
>  developer in a company reaches a certain minimum level, money stop to
>  be the primary motivator. Non-tangible things become more important.
>
>  Since people come work here without pay this means they already have
>  the basic level of income. They can be teenagers, living off their
>  parents. They can be students. They can be people with day job or
>  people with external income sources. So the money is not the primary
>  motivator here (duh!). 
Ok, how about fixing a few of our old and boring bugs? Got motivation  
to fix partitioning in the first stage setup, for example, by  
rewriting old code?
Motivation? It gives more usability to the project.


Just an example.

WBR,
Aleksey Bragin.

[Alex]

Hello Aleksey,

Friday, July 17, 2009, 4:28:46 PM, you wrote:

>   Ok, how about fixing a few of our old and boring bugs?
> Got motivation
>  to fix partitioning in the first stage setup, for example, by  
>  rewriting old code?
>  Motivation? It gives more usability to the project. 
You are missing the point. Motivation is not just a logical
explanation of what is good and needed for the project.

Hell, I probably should eat healthier food, I know it. I know that
it's good for me. Does it motivate me to do so? No.

Many smokers know that it's bad for their health. How many quit?

These are not very good examples, but I hope you got the point -
there is more to motivating people than just explaining what needs to
be done.

--
Best regards,
 Alex                            mailto:[e-mail]

[Olaf Siejka]

I have a crapload of those, alas they often require a bit more work than
stubplementing a few api`s. Some are in bugzilla for years... well i
understand that there were more important things. I still think that "make
this and that app work" is just a theory, wont work, or will require hefty
hacks.

-------------------------------------
Ok, how about fixing a few of our old and boring bugs? Got motivation
to fix partitioning in the first stage setup, for example, by
rewriting old code?
Motivation? It gives more usability to the project.


Just an example.

WBR,
Aleksey Bragin.

[victor martinez]

Hi,
Well it´s nice to see that a Dev is asking in the ML about this issue. If instead Samuel
the email were sent by a new guy,the most probably answer would have been "Patches
are accepted","Less arguing more patching","DIY"..which is a nice
way of saying "shut up" and not trying to find a way.You can find these answers
in forum, which "is" our main Users base income. 

I'm agree with the "Attracting developers" instead "Users"
idea,but..until now this approach(if we are following any)didnt work.In the last year just
¿two?,¿three? developers have come, and some has gone or are in IDLE mode. Why isnt this
approach working?
1)What are we doing to "Attract developers"? ReactOS is going to 2-3 FOSS
meetings at year. Is it enough?I doubt it.
2)Which strategies are we using to attract Devs and not Users? 
3)Do we have any strategy at all?
4)How many potential Devs know about ReactOS?

Next point: "Attracting Devs and not Users"

I´m totally agree with this approach,but until now i didnt see a clear move in this
direction. And maybe the reason is that is impossible to attract Devs without attracting
Users.
Let´s imagine we are gold miners, devs are Gold and users are Earth. There are two
approaches to find gold. The first approach is the "Surface goldmining", the
Gold miner goes to a logical place where gold is present and he tries just to pick the
gold nuggets from the surface of the earth, it´s quite impossible to pick a clean gold
nugget, it always goes with some Earth sticked, but also there are just few gold nuggets
in the surface.Gold is quite valuable and other project..err..i mean..gold miners have
taken them.
The second approach is the "Digging goldmining", this means touching a lot of
Earth, moving sand just to reach the main seam of Gold. In order words, reaching to all
possible people so among them you will find the valuable Gold.


I like the idea of "Attracting Developers and not Users" because Users are
selfish: if one app doesnt work they say ReactOS sucks. In the same way they have damaged
OpenOffice because it was unable to open MS documments correctly.Now OO maybe opens the
documments correctly but the damage is done. We have to choose the correct moment to
attract Users so ReactOS get spread by word of mouth in a positive way.This is quite
important.


Also we cant forget about the "Attracting Companies", ReactOS general idea is
interesting as you can see with the TMax-company approach.So we arent convincing the
companies or they dont know this project at all.Also finding other new-unexplored ways of
"selling" ReactOS as a product would be nice(although maybe too soon for these
new-unexplored) i.e: maybe Adobe is interested in having a special ReactOS-Distro where
their products runs with better performance(thanks to a special Memory management)and a
Special GUI for developing.It would still let other windows apps to be installed.Too soon
for this symbiosis as i said but another door to knock.Another way of selling ReactOS as a
product.

Regards,
Víctor Martínez Calvo


_________________________________________________________________
Nuevo Windows Live, un mundo lleno de posibilidades. Descúbrelo.
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowslive/default.aspx

[Alex]

Hello All,

I just thought I should mention how I found out about ROS: there was
a torrent on our local tracker with a short title "ReactOS 0.3.9".

And I said to myself - WTF? I never heard about an OS by that name.
And only 30 Mb?

I.e., by pure accident :)

But on the other hand, if ROS weren't functional enough, users
wouldn't put it on the tracker. So there is some merit in improving
the user-land and what Victor talked about.


BTW, I think it would be interesting if other people on this list said
how they first find out about ReactOS.


Saturday, July 18, 2009, 12:12:28 AM, you wrote:

>   I'm agree with the "Attracting
> developers" instead "Users"
>  idea,but..until now this approach(if we are following any)didnt
>  work.In the last year just їtwo?,їthree? developers have come, and
>  some has gone or are in IDLE mode. Why isnt this approach working? 
-- 
Best regards,
 Alex                            mailto:[e-mail]

[Alexandru Lovin]

My story is a bit more interesting. Short version: Wikipedia. Long version:

I was looking around for a list of OSes, to see 16-bit ones, 32-bit ones,
8-bit ones, etc. I was more interested in how much you can do with few bits
- 8 or 16, for example. I was trying to find out what the latest NT version
to run on a 386 is (answer: 3.51, the last one before NT 4). I think I still
have that laptop and it still works.

I can't remember the history of Wikipedia links I followed until I got to
ReactOS but I think it was because I saw the page for "Microsoft Windows"
which contained the "emulation software" category. ReactOS was listed there,
so love at first sight.

And then my mind just generated some ideas about how to help but I won't go
into further detail :)

2009/7/17 Alex <care2debug(a)gmail.com>

>   Hello All,
>
>  I just thought I should mention how I found out about ROS: there was
>  a torrent on our local tracker with a short title "ReactOS 0.3.9".
>
>  And I said to myself - WTF? I never heard about an OS by that name.
>  And only 30 Mb?
>
>  I.e., by pure accident :)
>
>  But on the other hand, if ROS weren't functional enough, users
>  wouldn't put it on the tracker. So there is some merit in improving
>  the user-land and what Victor talked about.
>
>
>  BTW, I think it would be interesting if other people on this list said
>  how they first find out about ReactOS.
>
>
>  Saturday, July 18, 2009, 12:12:28 AM, you wrote:
>
> >   I'm agree with the "Attracting
> > developers" instead "Users"
> >  idea,but..until now this approach(if we are following any)didnt
> >  work.In the last year just їtwo?,їthree? developers have come, and
> >  some has gone or are in IDLE mode. Why isnt this approach working? 
>  --
>   Best regards,
>   Alex                            mailto:[e-mail]
>
>
>  _______________________________________________
>  Ros-dev mailing list
>  Ros-dev(a)reactos.org
>  http://www.reactos.org/mailman/listinfo/ros-dev
>  


-- 
Alex Lovin - www.erasereality.3x.ro

[Maya Posch]

For me I discovered ReactOS many years ago during its CLI-only days 
during my search for alternative OSs. I essentially searched for new OSs 
to try and follow :)

What I think may help the exposure of ReactOS is to work on a really 
polished release every so many months, something which can act like a 
flyer, a pretty form of advertising people will want to use casually. In 
my opinion the current VM images are still far too hard to use, let 
alone advertised very clearly on the site. If it takes more than 5 
minutes to find, download and run the demo, most people will have lost 
interest. I never tried many of those alternative OSs because I couldn't 
be bothered to set up a VM for every single one of them.

Users are lazy and like shiny things. I think we can give it to them :)


Maya


Alex wrote:
>   Hello All,
>  
>  I just thought I should mention how I found out about ROS: there was
>  a torrent on our local tracker with a short title "ReactOS 0.3.9".
>  
>  And I said to myself - WTF? I never heard about an OS by that name.
>  And only 30 Mb?
>  
>  I.e., by pure accident :)
>  
>  But on the other hand, if ROS weren't functional enough, users
>  wouldn't put it on the tracker. So there is some merit in improving
>  the user-land and what Victor talked about.
>  
>  
>  BTW, I think it would be interesting if other people on this list said
>  how they first find out about ReactOS.
>  
>  
>  Saturday, July 18, 2009, 12:12:28 AM, you wrote:
>  
> >   I'm agree with the "Attracting
> > developers" instead "Users"
> >  idea,but..until now this approach(if we are following any)didnt
> >  work.In the last year just їtwo?,їthree? developers have come, and
> >  some has gone or are in IDLE mode. Why isnt this approach working? 
>

[Michael Martin]

Ok

>   BTW, I think it would be interesting if other people
> on this list said
>  how they first find out about ReactOS. 
I read the ROS-DEV mailing list to get information on development issues and the like,
not to read everyone story on how they found ROS. 
IMO this stuff needs to be kept on the forums and needs to be squashed immediately.

Mike


_________________________________________________________________
Windows Live™: Keep your life in sync. 
http://windowslive.com/explore?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_BR_life_in_synch_062009

[Aleksey Bragin]

It could go to ros-general then, but it fits forums the best. The  
issue started out as a development problem though.

WBR,
Aleksey.

On Jul 18, 2009, at 1:40 AM, Michael Martin wrote:

>   Ok
>
> >   BTW, I think it would be interesting if other
> > people on this list   
>  said
> >   how they first find out about ReactOS. 
>  I read the ROS-DEV mailing list to get information on development  
>  issues and the like,
>  not to read everyone story on how they found ROS.
>  IMO this stuff needs to be kept on the forums and needs to be  
>  squashed immediately.
>
>  Mike

[Jose Catena]

I think I would be a good example of a potential new developer,  one that
would be valuable and interested in the project. So perhaps my opinion may
count to an average of the way others like me would see ReactOS.

Maybe my opinion might be also valuable because I have been managing large
scale projects for 12 years (embedded and distributed OSs, RT, mass
transport automation, electric distribution networks automation, robotics,
scientific satellites, etc), but never with open source projects, so take it
accordingly, I don't intend that my opinion is necessarily valuable for
ReactOS.

 

The goal is very, extremely attractive, and once wine is working, we think
with reason that a very meaningful part is done. I'm sure feel very
attracted.

But after studying the code a bit and following the mailing lists for a
while, the perception of organization and progress is poor, what introduces
the doubt: there is a lot of work to be done, would my effort be wasted?

I assume that every developer in the team is motivated by the goal, while
each one may have specific areas of interest, preference, of experience.
Everyone would understand that their own efforts would be a waste if the
whole project does not success. Everyone needs a minimum infrastructure and
organization to progress efficiently. So, everyone should understand the
need to address high priority areas that are slowing down everyone.

The highest priorities IMHO are:

1)      Documentation.  I know most devs like me hate having to write it.
But complex projects can't progress well without a minimum well structured
documentation. Someone has to define a basic hierarchy and rules. Whenever
someone knew or learned anything that is undocumented, update the docs, so
that others can work coherently. Maybe some of you think there is some, but
to me (please remember my outsider point of view) it seems very poor.

2)      Drivers installation. The drivers needed to run ReactOS in any
hardware or VM are already available. It is prioritary, at least, to have
.inf parsing and adv/setup api working well. If developers can't start the
OS in the platform they need to test hardly will anyone be efficient, if
does not leave the effort at all. Of course drivers can fail after
succesfully installed, as so many things, but bugs in .inf installation are
first time stoppers and need to be addressed asap.

3)      Bug reporting and tracking database. I'm sure you all agree
regarding the necessity of a well designed one. Someone has to do it, a
project like this can not progress far without it.

 

Again, take this with a grain of salt, I don't know ReackOS like most of
you, I intended more to show first time perceptions that may atract or not,
than being accurate in the criticism.

 

After explaining my perception, I tell you that I sincerely want to
contribute as soon as I can, I just don't have enough time currently.

 

Jose Catena

DIGIWAVES S.L.

[Olaf Siejka]

2009/7/18 Jose Catena <jc1(a)diwaves.com>

>  But after studying the code a bit and following the
> mailing lists for a 
while, the perception of organization and progress is >poor,
what introduces
the doubt: there is a lot of work to be done, would my effort be wasted?

The only case your effort might be wasted is if you`d writing bad/incorrect
code.

Its a pity your criticizm is not a constructive one. Its easy to point out
things in this project that are not really capable. You dont need to be a
developer to point those, more or less correctly. The real deal is thinking
of solutions.

>  1) Documentation. I know most devs like me hate having
> to write it. But 
complex projects can’t progress well without a >minimum well
structured
documentation. Someone has to define a basic hierarchy and rules. Whenever
someone knew or >learned anything that is undocumented, update the docs, so
that others can work coherently. Maybe some of you think there >is some, but
to me (please remember my outsider point of view) it seems very poor.

In simple words, we should force writing docs via commit rules? You are
right to say that documenting is really despised of. What can we do?
Developers here code for fun/knowledge, they arent paid. How can we force
anyone to write docs if that person doesnt want to do it? Introducing such
rules would quickly result in simple equation: undocumented code or no code
at all. Now that`s a great idea.

>  2) Drivers installation. The drivers needed to run
> ReactOS in any hardware 
or VM are already available. It is prioritary, at least,
>to have .inf
parsing and adv/setup api working well. If developers can’t start the OS in
the platform they need to test hardly will >anyone be efficient, if does not
leave the effort at all. Of course drivers can fail after succesfully
installed, as so many things, >but bugs in .inf installation are first time
stoppers and need to be addressed asap.

Surprise... it actually works. Please see Supported Hardware wikipage. Its
not simple, it doesn`t work ootb and it would need serious improvements, but
you can actually install ANY driver apart from the one for I/O controller,
as UNIATA is currently hardcoded into registry and not using hdc.inf as it
should be (/me looks at Fireball). I`m not a programmer, yet i managed test
several devices using XP drivers successfully. Anyone could be doing it. The
howto is on our wiki and you can just ask on #reactos for assistance.

>  3) Bug reporting and tracking database. I’m sure you
> all agree regarding 
the necessity of a well designed one. Someone has >to do it,
a project like
this can not progress far without it.

http://www.reactos.org/bugzilla/

Regards