I had discovered FreeDOS about 2 months ago. Today, I LiveCD-tried ReactOS, an open-source initiative aiming at reproducing the Windows NT environment.

Although I’m not an expert, I found the software to be pretty stable. However, the system crashed when I installed good old “Alone in the Dark” (those who were playing PC games back in the middle of the 1990s certainly know what I’m talking about).  The ReactOS team had warned me though: the current version (0.3.0) is an alpha stage release and is not recommended for everyday use.

Looking at the history page of the ReactOS community website, it appears that the project “grew out of a dissatisfaction with Microsoft’s monopoly over the operating system market” (stated in context).

Jason Filby, and all guys belonging to the team: you’re doing an amazing job. But how the heck can you claim to escape from a so-called monopoly by reproducing its flagship product?

You’re definitely all excellent at hacking quality code, and you wanted something new, a different OS. By the same token, it was obvious you’d never reach Windows NT’s quality and functional scope. So why didn’t you guys teamed up to start a start-up company? Why didn’t you help yourselves fullfill your dream and come up with a brand new, disruptive operating system?

I’m guessing you’re sitting on the fence with Microsoft. It’s a soft of love-hate relationship. If I were a painter and hated Picasso for any reason (which is far from being the case), I would want to copy anybody but him.

Before I finished writing this post, I discovered on Alex Ionescu’s blog, one of the main recent contributors of the ReactOS community, that Alex actually is a Microsoft Student Ambassador.

Eventually, it looks like my intuitions weren’t far from the reality…a love-hate relationship.

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