ReactOS: A Free Replacement of Windows XP?
While this is project is only in Alpha it is something to keep an eye on. Here is a quote from the ReactOS site as to the goal of the project:
The ReactOS® project is dedicated to making Free Software available to everyone by providing a ground-up implementation of a Microsoft Windows® XP compatible operating system. ReactOS aims to achieve complete binary compatibility with both applications and device drivers meant for NT and XP operating systems, by using a similar architecture and providing a complete and equivalent public interface.
You can check out some screenshots of the operating system in action.
Here are some interesting comments from Wikipedia:
ReactOS is primarily written in C, with some elements like ReactOS Explorer, written in C++. Various components of ReactOS are licensed under the GNU General Public License, the GNU Lesser General Public License and/or the BSD License. To ensure that no part of the OS is tainted with leaked Microsoft code, a total source code audit has been ordered by the head developers of ReactOS.
. . .
This is expected to set the project back by a lot as it could take years to complete the audit and rewriting of affected parts of the source code. This audit was done by creating a new repository and copying code from the old repository as it is audited.
It seems like the project has been aptly named - there should be plenty of "reaction" to this from all quarters…
