[ros-dev] Arwinss presentation

Sat Jan 16 22:44:37 CET 2010

	All,
today I would like to officially announce the (sub)project I was 
working on for the last half a year, and make a call to developers to 
participate.
ReactOS has been around for about 11 years, and it's been growing 
each year since then. The demand for an open source Windows- 
compatible operating system is huge: geek, servers, netbooks, 
accounting, point of sales, CAD... The list could go on and on.
Time goes by, new versions of Windows operating systems are being 
released. ReactOS usability still has not reached any significant 
value. Not to say ReactOS didn't even officially enter the Beta 
stage. Separately, there are many achievements: audio support 
appeared, bootloader is able to boot real Windows, some Windows 
binary drivers could be loaded and work in ReactOS, networking is 
being improved every day, the kernel is being actively worked on too. 
But all of that does not really matter for the end user. For a user 
it's important that a web-browser loads websites, instant messenger 
client connects and works, [Microsoft/Open] Office shows documents, 
email client gets new messages.
This bare usability is what's still missing, and if ti continues to 
be like this, I am afraid our project won't be of much use in another 
10 years. Certainly, I became very concerned and started analyzing 
situation. Being opensource project without major commercial 
sponsors, there are certain limitations as to what could be done to 
improve the situation, so mainly it's a matter of picking right 
priorities and properly managing (motivating) existing human resources.
The part of ReactOS which plays major role in compatibility and 
usability is Win32 subsystem. Right now, it's a huge monster which 
requires a lot more human resources than we have now. It's very hard 
and time consuming to reach even Windows 2000 level of compatibility 
with current amount of participating developers, and high entry level.
I came up with something which could solve this problem: Arwinss. To 
better explain what it is, I made a special presentation (URL to 
slides in PDF format is in the end of this email). Please imagine 
myself talking through it as I didn't perform/record it.
Now, after you read through the presentation, I would like to make a 
proposal to all developers (even newcomers, who never worked on 
ReactOS before). Let's make an Arwinss week, or Arwinss month. Every 
developer could definitely find a few hours during a week to hack 
Arwinss. Entry level is rather low, there are some basic docs about 
Arwinss in the wiki, and I am happy to consult about details.
If I could make this new subsystem out of nothing (out of Wine and 
ReactOS) almost alone (Kamil and Smiley help is very valued and 
appreciated!) within a few months, imagine what we could do all 
together?
With the best regards,
Aleksey Bragin.
The presentation: (links to further information are in the 
presentation too)
http://www.reactos.org/media/docs/2010/arwinss.pdf