The Space In Between

by Dmitry Kirsanov 4. May 2012 19:26

A5 chipYou’ve already heard about the Windows Phone operating system. Microsoft invested a lot of money into making you hear about it. They are trying to form opinion and clear up the niche for their new attempt to settle in the mobile phone market, and this time it appears like they went for broke.

It’s not only huge resources spent on all sorts of advertisements, but also the unusual amount of FUD in their pitch. One of such arguments that riveted my attention is that iPhone is a glamorous gadget for non-geeks. If you believe it, then this article is for you. More...

ReactOS Rising?

by Dmitry Kirsanov 1. May 2012 18:03

ros_logo_08Have you ever heard about ReactOS? It’s an operating system which was in “alpha” state for the last 16 years (!) and is basically a free, open-source Windows clone. It looks just like Windows XP / 2003, but the code base is written from scratch. However, the software written for Windows should work just fine on ReactOS. That’s the goal, at least. For now, applications like WinAmp and uTorrent work stable on current release.

Just about now the founder of this project, Aleksey Bragin, sent an e-mail claiming he is fundraising to actually hire full time developers for his OS. Until now it was a hobby for everyone, but now he is about to make it real. Taking into account that his goal is quite modest 30 000 euro, I think he’ll make it in no time, so the only question that is left open – what’s next?

Either he is going to ship this OS (to potentially free millions of PCs from the inevitable upgrade of Windows XP), or he wants to rise the price of the project to sell it. In a latter case, the question is who would buy it – would it be some social network, financially capable to have a pet operating system, or would it be some ill management addict company, which is buying new projects and technologies to substitute previously acquired and dying ones?

More questions than answers, but anyway, I wish these guys a well deserved success.