Tech talk, cold comfort.

Here's another post that I'm going to have to preface first. I like the idea of ReactOS. I run it in a virtual machine now and then. I get it too that money can go a long ways to getting things done. If you do a little digging at the project's main site you can see where so of the previous donations were put to good use. Okay, now that all of that's out of the way, I have to say that the ReactOS Community Edition website and it's fund-raising site at indiegogo are among some of the most idiotic, poorly thought out and implemented things I have ever seen.

http://community.reactos.org/

I'm having a difficult time even knowing where to begin. Okay, first where do I download this community edition? Well, you have to dig around to find out that it doesn't exist. Through links you might end up here:

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/reac ... ition#home

So this is where they ask for donations. Ooh I see some options to "promote your app" and "promote your hardware", that sounds good doesn't it? Okay, so is there some guarantee that if I donate the dollars needed to do one of those things that the "app" or hardware that I choose will be supported in this vaporware release? I understand that this couldn't possibly be, but what about the poor saps who don't? Will they be offered their money back?

For those not understanding why one doesn't do things like this, perhaps this will help:

https://www.reactos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=13256

Unfortunately, you can't casually estimate how many developers it would take to get something like this done. For one thing, each developer has different skills and experience with different parts of the code, so it's not the same as the classic "if 5 workers can move 10 crates in an hour, how many workers to does it take to move 200 crates in two hours?" scenario. There may not even be 4-5 developers who have the necessary experience. Also, five developers won't necessarily work five times as fast as one developer. They can't all be working on the same part of the code, so they have to efficiently divide the work between themselves, and inevitably some of those tasks will be completed faster than others, while other tasks will be stuck waiting for the other tasks. Throwing more manpower at a coding problem doesn't scale linearly; there are always diminishing results. Finally, no one can predict when they might hit a brick wall that just can't be easily overcome. It's quite possible that there's no amount of effort that can be thrown at explorer_new that would have it done before the IGG campaign ends. I'm sure every effort is already being made to have a 0.4 release as soon as possible.

Oh and "Hidden Stretch Goals", seriously? And if $60,000 is reached they'll send Microsoft a cake! Fun-fun-silly-willy! Jesus!

Perhaps the same thing could be said about throwing X number of dollars/rubles/yuun, et cetra at a problem doesn't magically make it go away. While I wish the project all the best and really do think a lot of it, I hope that future fundraising efforts are a little better thought out. Perhaps a more general "we want to get features X,Y and Z implemented and your money will go toward that effort", would make more sense.

I was never convinced that React was ever going to go anywhere, and it's vaporware. Call me a skeptic...

In my opinion, stuff like ReactOS is like piracy. Not in the literal sense that is. Many people pirate movies because they want to "boycott" the big studios but you know what? They are still "consuming" their products. If you dislike a corporation or the way they distribute or handle their product, you shouldn't be using their product at all. The more people try to use it, the more that corporation continues on the same path.

ReactOS could be all nice and dandy but really, if someone dislikes Microsoft or the way they handle Windows, they should stop using Windows. That is a far more effective way or getting your message across. I think using Linux in its pure form is much better than something like "Wine" or "ReactOS". Surely, there will be much brain pain when you switch to a new operating system. At least, there will be for me because I haven't touched Linux for, maybe 14 years.

But I personally doubt that I will ever accept renting my operating system (or personal computer), Windows. The way things look, it seems that I have to be going the Linux route pretty soon. I am already going through the pain of learning GIMP instead of my beloved Paint Shop Pro (X). But you know what? At the end of the day, I'm OK with using GIMP instead of Paint Shop Pro (X). I never liked their fucking spy service running 24x7 on my machine anyway just to check if my Paint Shop Pro (X) license is valid. Fuck them!

And I definitely have little trust on many of these Kickstarter types of donation asking. Hell, I even have huge doubt when MSFN keep asking for donations, take peoples' money and then even ban them without a refund. As you state, "ReactOS" seems to be milking people for their money for a product that isn't really all that.

Hell, just look at foolsdesign.org and techtalk.cc, we personally pay around €60 ($80) every month (!) for keeping the Web sites going. You haven't seen us asking for donations because in reality, as a user, what we provide is not really worth paying for on a monthly basis. At least not right now. I'm saying that as the founder of this place, that's how honest we are here!

If we ever will be in need of money, we should find other better ways of funding the place rather than asking for shady donations without any clear benefits for the donating parties or in cases like MSFN, without even disclosing their cost or where the hell that money goes!

Does "ReactOS" even disclose exactly what they need $60.000 for? Because that's a lot of money, at least in my world.