Yesterday I came across a bug report [1] with an attached patch to stub out the function RtlGetFullPathName_UEx, which is not documented by Microsoft, based on its prototype in ReactOS. Alexandre left the comment: [2]
"You should not look at ReactOS code at all, a lot of it is reverse-engineered using methods that are not appropriate for Wine. It's not a usable source of information for us."
The patch author, Ben, replied: [3]
"I just want the WIKI to be MUCH more definitive/precise on what IS and IS NOT allowed."
I took a look and as it currently stands, the wiki clearly encourages collaboration with ReactOS in at least one place: [4]
"If you're still resisting the switch to unix for some reason though, you may have some luck investigating ReactOS (they cooperate with us on API issues too)."
And it clearly discourages collaboration with ReactOS in at least one place: [5]
"it appears that all such documentation is derived from ReactOS, which is not considered a legally safe source for use in Wine."
Mention of ReactOS is conspicuously absent from the page that outlines Wine's "clean room" guidelines. [6]
Since Alexandre says that Wine developers shouldn't look at ReactOS code at all, I think we should remove from the wiki all references that might be construed to encourage it and add some more that discourage it. Does anyone have any further thoughts before I start editing?
-Alex
[1] https://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=50464 [2] https://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=50464#c6 [3] https://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=50464#c7 [4] https://wiki.winehq.org/Cygwin_and_More [5] https://wiki.winehq.org/AFD [6] https://wiki.winehq.org/Clean_Room_Guidelines