|
![](/i/fill.gif) |
Warp wrote:
> Invisible <voi### [at] dev null> wrote:
>> For those of you that don't know, there's a thing called ReactOS. It's a
>> free operating system which is supposed to be binary-compatible with
>> Microsoft Windows XP. (Despite the small and obvious problem that this
>> _should_ be 100% illegal.)
>
> Why would it be illegal? There's no law in any country I know of which
> would forbid building a system which is capable of running an program.
> It's not much different from making an emulator, and those aren't illegal.
>
> It would be illegal for them to lift binaries (eg. system libraries) from
> Windows XP and distributing them alongside their own OS, but it's perfectly
> legal for them to build their own versions of those binaries.
There may be a term in the EULA which prohibits reverse engineering. It
does not strike me as terribly likely that someone managed to write a
Windows OS clone without doing that.
Regards,
John
Post a reply to this message
|
![](/i/fill.gif) |