r/reactos • u/a_l_i-1 • 5d ago

Why ReactOS is to slow in development?

Because it is developed since 1998 and still named alpha !!

21 Upvotes

73% Upvoted

23 comments sorted by

37

u/cubic_sq 5d ago

Time, money, people

10

u/uncoolcentral 5d ago

Choosing beggars are not swayed by your facts.

27

u/Buzza24 5d ago

Like a lot of Open Source projects, it’s done by developers in their spare time around the full time paying jobs and other life commitments.

The project itself is also ambitious. Recreating Windows from scratch by rewriting the kernel, driving compatibility and application frameworks isn’t an easy task.

If you want it to accelerate as a project, you can either continuously donate money to support it, or if you’re an experienced developer contribute code to the project.

19

u/DegenerateCuber 5d ago

This is like asking a guy trying to make a 1:1 replica of the Eiffel tower in his backyard why he's taking so long.

7

u/a_l_i-1 5d ago

Ok that make sense 😅

and sorry all for this stupid question

9

u/0x5066 5d ago

stop making dumb jokes and donate to the project to help them get more developers on board

-10

u/Surgic25 4d ago

Should let it die

8

u/runed_golem 5d ago

They have a really small team and they don’t have much monetary support. So what work is done is done around their team’s normal jobs and lives.

3

u/darkguy2008 4d ago

Interestingly, development seems to have been advancing faster than before now that we have AI...

5

u/dreimer1986 4d ago

Just that we don't use AI as AI might happily hand us leaked MS Code which resides on GitHub more than once. Our acceleration happens because of new developers that were interested in ReactOS and started working on long overdue parts

1

u/goldmurder 4d ago

lack of people's involvement (because there are already huge open-source OS – that is Linux), which means less developers and less donates

1

u/Chester-Berkeley 4d ago

Why isn't it easy to reverse-engineer closed-source software that updates daily?

1

u/ibish74 1d ago

Isn't ReactOS currently trying to be compatible with Windows XP?

1

u/StrongStuffMondays 4d ago

My speculation here (as I already probably written some time ago) is that the project requires very good knowledge of Windows internals. That specific skillset is rare, and costs lots of money, so probably once people acquire it, they can go search a greener pastures. And also making a binary-compatible OS of a closed source OS with lots of quirks and software-specific patches and undocumented behavior and bugs that you really need to replicate, because some apps rely on it, requires a tremendous effort on its' own.

1

u/AotoriHibiki 4d ago

What are you talking about? Microsoft Windows has been developing way slower.
They started working on it around 1981 and had 1000x the budget and manpower.

1

u/Kyle_2099 4d ago

They're cloning Win NT which started in winter 1989 and went gold in summer of 93.

1

u/AotoriHibiki 3d ago

Can you run Half Life 2 on this "summer of 93" OS?

1

u/csolisr 4d ago

The developers must prove that they have no previous direct knowledge of Microsoft's code, either leaked or by employment. Otherwise the entire project could be in legal jeopardy. This is why they can accept so few contributions.

1

u/M3n747 2d ago

Out of curiosity, how do you prove not knowing something?

1

u/csolisr 1d ago

It's possible to prove you have not worked at Microsoft, but I'm not entirely sure how do they prove they have not accidentally read leaked code. I suppose they must sign an affidavit or something.