On 9/21/07, Dan Kegel dank@kegel.com wrote:
(the two projects were the same originally, and split apart only after the world noticed just how illegal ReactOS's practices were).
These broad generalizations or downright libel statements prove more inflammatory that then accusations of developer taint. I take great objection to this as a lot of this crap happened under my watch.
1. Some developers practices might not be legal in the US. The project has an policy statement that most developers followed. Others did not. It happens. It was never taken to court and ultimately those developers left anyway. If you know of a function in ReactOS that looks suspicious feel free to send a note their way. I am sure they will remove it. What happens if I say "Function foo looks like its dirty and it made it in the Wine tree" Is wine forever tainted? Can you point out case-law or a standard ANYWHERE ReactOS needs to follow to make the Wine people happy? I can point to one standard and Julliard already said he did not agree with it.
http://www.gnu.org/prep/standards/
They even have a whole page for people that have SEEN proprietary sources
http://www.gnu.org/prep/standards/html_node/Reading-Non_002dFree-Code.html#R...
2. To Date Wine does not have a clearly identifiable policy statement about what is Kosher and what is not and EVER FREAKING WEEK someone asks a policy related question on wine-devel. Can I use ReactOS code? Do we follow the same rules as the GNU coding standards? What is clean room reverse engineering? What is the Audit thing I keep hearing about?
3. How about, rather than blackballing a whole project or group and causing guilt by association, we use the same standards for everyone when submitting patches, codify them and let that be that. What happens the day Wine gets a patch from a @microsoft.com email? Do we blackball them if their corporate policy changes to allow a contribution. I mean you know they make a compiler right? You know they also submit patches to GCC for Interix right? I hope to God we have a standard in place by then and a webform that allows that person to say "I never had access to windows source that had analogous functionality".
4. Do you think Vlad the Reverser from Russia sending a patch to wine-patches is going to preface his patches saying "I reversed this" or "I copied this"? No hes going to submit it and Julliard is going to have to make a judgment call based upon if he knows the person, the quality of the code and the planarity alignment.
I could go on but I am just ranting and angry because this keeps coming up and the solution seems clear enough. Can we at least, while the crickets chirp on the audit, get the SFLC to publish some bloody standards we should all follow?
Thanks