A couple of statements on their web site:
"One of the problems of the MS Windows OS is that it is subject to crash
applications and itself. While studying the Microsoft Windows OS, we
found the design flaw that causes this problem."
_the_ design flaw? Marketing hype. It seems from later statements that
they're talking about Microsoft's decision to relocate large sections of
previously user-land code into the kernel (in particular, GDI), much
commented on when NT went from 3.51 to 4.0.
Later on, when comparing themselves to WINE, they state:
"SpecOpS Labs believes, that [WINE] suffers from a major architectural
flaw, which requires a major rewrite of the WINE code. The WINE project
had been too faithful in reverse engineering the Windows Environment
Subsystem, that it also inherited the architectural flaws in Windows.
Among these flaws is when a problem is experienced by an application
running in a Window, it can crash the whole operating system, causing it
to either hang or reboot. "
I think I'm right in saying an application using WINE _cannot_ crash the
kernel, any more than any other user-land app. Also, from what I
understand, it is _not_ WINE policy to re-implement Win32 bug-for-bug
(since Microsoft do fix bugs, this is sensible).
It looks like their project is on the search for large-scale funding.
Assuming they can't distribute WINE code (good ol' GPL), they have a lot
of work to do. Their "architecture" basically means full Win32 API
implementation, with what looks like a priviledged kernel component
("WACS Driver") to interface to priviledged objects in the kernel.
Incidentally, that kernel component better be rock-solid or they _will_
be able to kill the kernel from Windows apps in their subsystem...
They do claim to have a "prototype" - I would guess that's either a
modified WINE, or if newly written only implements a very small subset
of the Win32 API. It will be interesting to see how quickly they get
product to market, and when they do to see how much WINE code is used
(which will need object-code comparisons, of course). One of their
headline comments is:
"David is not a reinvention of the wheel. It takes the best of breed
pieces from previous attempts to simulate the Windows Subsystem, and
integrates them into a single product."
We shall see. There's a lot of "validation" garbage on the site, which
to my mind isn't worth the paper it isn't printed on.
It could well be they'll just raise loads of cash, then later crash and
burn when they realise quite how much effort they need to spend to
reimplement everything - or maybe when they realise they'll be violating
the GPL if they lift WINE code.
Kev.