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ReactOS 0.3.1 Released
fireballrus writes with news of the release of ReactOS 0.3.1 — press release, changelog, download packages. ReactOS is "an open source effort to develop a quality operating system that is compatible with applications and drivers written for the Microsoft Windows NT family of operating systems (NT4, 2000, XP, 2003)." The press release notes: "Please don't forget this is an alpha-stage operating system, which means it is not suitable to replace your main OS. Also, this release is aimed to be run mostly in virtualizers / emulators (like QEmu, VMWare, Parallels, etc): because of the big amount of changes, our development team was not able to test/fix all problems which arise when running ReactOS on real hardware."
The legal issues associated with reverse engineering an operating system to run programs originally written for windows should not be any scarier than those associated with reverse engineering (clone) the hardware to run software written for IBM PC. IBM had deep pockets and a penchant for enforcing its large IP portfolio, but the cloners won.
On the other hand, at that point in time IBM wasn't really all that interested in stopping the development of clone PCs, for a variety of reasons. Had they really chosen to throw their weight around, they most certainly could have, in which case someone else would have taken over (which might have been a good thing for world of personal computing, when you get right down to it.)
Apple, in fact, spent far more time in court suing the likes of Franklin Computer (who, in many ways, had a better product.) Granted, that may have been simply because IBM didn't perceive the personal computer as being a big part of their future, at that point in time, since big iron was still their bread-and-butter. However, if you want to get into the history of anticompetitive behavior at IBM, check out out how they dealt with anyone making plug-compatible components for their mainframe systems in the 60's and 70's. That was a very different story. There's a guy named Amdahl that would be happy to enlighten you.
Besides, the legal climate for reverse-engineering is decidedly less friendly to cloners than it was in, say, 1981.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
>If React OS can keep me running my current Windows apps in a sensible, secure, and supported environment, then I can avoid Vista. That means less headaches, and less expense.
Which is exactly why Microsoft will dig deep into it's legal fund and patent portfolio and nuke reactos off the face of the planet the very second that ReactOS becomes a practical alternative to Windows.