ReactOS as a second OS in Russian government's software freedom effort
reactos.org
reactos.org
Good luck with that; Russia isn't interested in software freedom, they're just not interested in something from outside Russia they can't control.
EDIT: A friend informs me that the head of the project is himself Russian, and already works largely under government funding. So in retrospect, less "amoral tech nerds take money from wherever they can get it" and more "some Russian bureaucrats want their own Red Star OS".
Which is exactly what the first paragraph states: "are pursuing measures to rid vendor lock-in of strategically important software"
Why should Russia (or any organization, from 1 person up to nations) prefer vendor lock-in over something that they can control?
Russia doesn't want GNU, they just want a Russian Microsoft that's in Putin's pocket like everything else.
Take a look at what's happened to VKontakte some time.
Of course the Russian government wants to be able to control their systems, and any positive effects for others are at best some nice PR.
How does that detract any value from ReactOS (or Linux, which is their "other" desktop and server OS)?
One of the principles of Open Source (compared to Free Software) is the idea that people and organizations work in a project where every contributor works in their self-interest. Why is this suddenly a bad thing?
And he knows it, which is why he's trying to GTHO of there (even at the price of a reasonably short prison sentence in the U.S.).
There's a reason Snowden would leave Russia at the earliest possibility.
I'm skeptical Russia would allow someone like William Binney to walk around saying the things he has been for years. Or that Russia wouldn't essentially rig a sentence up for someone like Daniel Ellsberg, given Russia's extraordinarily corrupt justice system.
And to reply to a sister comment - you don't have to be gay to run into various trouble you wouldn't expect to run into in the West, though being one will likely make matters worse.
It is certainly true that standard of living is lower in Russia, but is better than many other countries you consider "free".
When you demand "facts", do you demand definite proof that the government did it (a bloody hard thing to obtain in the case of a murdering government), or are you claiming that the UK murders a similar amount of journalists?
As to "countries that I consider free" - I don't know where you get insight into my thinking; I was talking specifically about the UK which the grandparent brought up.
I have to admit that I'm sick and tired of relativism brought to a point where black and white are supposed to be indistinguishable. Seriously, who'd you rather fuck with, the Putin government or the current UK government? I think we all know the answer. Why are people wishing to sound "objective" so eager to ignore the obvious?
"The number of middle-class Russians could halve to 20 percent, taking it back to the same level as after the 1998 default and devaluation, says Evgeny Gontmakher, chief economist at the Institute of Contemporary Development, whose board of trustees is headed by Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev."
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-04-23/putin-s-mi...
Even ignoring the context, Russia is more free than US in anarchical sense, as you can do more things without repercussions there than in US. US jails population vastly outnumbers Russias, and you don't need a fishing license in Russia :)
That is very questionable. Try being gay in Russia and then tell me how free you are. It wont be the government oppressing you usually (oh they will - see Pussy Riot) it'll be your neighbors, employers, cops, etc. There are other "oppressors" than rule of law, there's also mob mentalities.
Russia is also very low on any human/political freedom index. Yeah, and bragging about shitty wildlife conservationism isn't impressive either. Reminds me of the Chinese who are patriotic, then don a mask to not breath in the filthy polluted air they live with.
[to add: I have no interest in defending Russia, and no skin in the game. However the cheap shots annoy me]
Of cause it is a window of opportunity for the software integrators. But it is bloody money they are getting.
(Did not want to be political, but it is a political news article)
Long time ago Russian military had a brilliant idea to maintain their own Linux - it was an epic failure. And always will be.
I know this is a loaded question but I mean it seriously. The importance of legal aspects is highly varying, from matter-deciding to completely irrelevant. Especially if you have a government of a souvereign country like russia behind you, legal problems about redistribution or usage shouldn't be a big problem.
EDIT: Somewhat related - regarding OpenGL, ReactOS' decision was to bundle only the version 1.4, because installing the graphic card's drivers will give you exactly the last version of OpenGL your card can handle, that is - if you'd be interested in accessing the card's capacity (beyond what the default bundled ReactOS driver will give you) in the first place. Many folks might not even be interested in such a thing, considering that not every one plays hardcore games, so why bother? Why bloating the entire system with something that can be left as optional?
By the way, why are you so strongly opposed to people doing stuff?
BTW, I am the guy who migrated Lenta's (retail chain) servers from SCO Open Server to Linux back in 2000 without losing a single day of sales.
Good to know.
I agree that you need a community of users and developers for a successful open-source project. Luckily in addition to the companies like Joyent, OmniTI, Nexenta, Lucera, Delphix (who all actually do a lot of drivers development) there is a friendly and growing community of volunteers that contribute.
What is sadly sometimes lacking a bit is marketing. After oracle went closed again many assumed opensolaris died, but in fact a lot of interesting systems development is happening in illumos land. Of course all open source. I wish a few more people would recognize what a great system and community SmartOS and OmniOS have.
Do you think that they have the same kinds of controls that it took MS literally a decade and millions of to dollars develop?...Controls that that were expensive in time and money that then only improved their development to the extent that it has? (far, far from perfect.)
Maybe...and this is a big maybe...there is a enough of a difference between react and windows that normal windows bugs won't be surfaced. I'm curios as to whether they support NX, ASLR, or 64 bit? Even if they don't copy the system bug for bug they may be trivially exploitable just because they don't have the resources to harden it.
I'm not saying anything negative about open source...I'm just saying that its more complex than just having code available.
ReactOS may very well have bugs, security issues, and similar. But those have nothing to do with the fact that it is designed to be compatible with Windows APIs.
I get what you're saying, though.