Elect a new project leader

BitBucket · Post by **BitBucket** » Mon May 28, 2012 3:14 pm

Hi folks!

I suggest to vote for a new project leader. It is time for a new begining, pushing the project further.
After years of alpha status there should be an end of term of the current project leader to give chance to others.

Post by **hto** » Mon May 28, 2012 4:00 pm

And who would you recommend as a new leader?..

fulea.stefan · Post by **fulea.stefan** » Mon May 28, 2012 4:15 pm

BitBucket wrote:Hi folks!

I suggest to vote for a new project leader. It is time for a new begining, pushing the project further.
After years of alpha status there should be an end of term of the current project leader to give chance to others.

Well come to the ReactOS project.
Thou shalt need to be citizen to cast such a vote around here! In such matters the developers guild (a kind of powerful wizards) is the one that takes decisions. If thou endeavor citizenship, beware - it will require will!

BitBucket · Post by **BitBucket** » Mon May 28, 2012 5:44 pm

I suggest AmineKhaldi or Aicom.

Pisarz · Post by **Pisarz** » Mon May 28, 2012 6:04 pm

I see no point in anything like that. Replacing whoever leads the ReactOS project wouldn't make things magically go faster.

FlyingIsFun1217 · Post by **FlyingIsFun1217** » Mon May 28, 2012 6:09 pm

This is humorous at best, and I don't mean that as an insult. You just need to understand how things work in the project before you can start a real vote like this.

The developers are the only ones working on the project, so they for the most part control how things work, how builds will be produced, etc. Sure, the end result is a product that a normal user will be dealing with, but it's not without the help of the developers.

And I suppose my only question; what would electing a new project leader do to speed things up? It won't necessarily mean that the developers actively working on the project learn more about the internals of windows and code any faster. That's what the fundraising campaign is for.

FlyingIsFun1217

DOSGuy · Post by **DOSGuy** » Mon May 28, 2012 6:16 pm

Now come on FlyingIsFun! Everyone knows that the project leader is the most important factor in the success or failure of a project. That's why CEOs get paid a hundred times more than the people who actually do the work! Following Wall Street's example, I recommend that we spend a lot of money to hire a new project leader so that the project can fail faster. </sarcasm>

Since it's not always obvious, the reason the project is moving slowly is because an operating system is normally developed by hundreds of full-time developers. The vast majority of "let's make a free and open source alternative to x operating system" projects have barely gotten off the ground. ReactOS isn't just a success story, it's nearly a miracle! And progress moved very quickly last year, thanks in large part to Google paying a number of students to work on ReactOS projects through the Google Summer of Code. The ReactOS Fundraising Campaign 2012 aims to duplicate that success by paying for developers to spend more time working on the project.

The123king · Post by **The123king** » Tue May 29, 2012 1:57 am

DOSGuy wrote:The vast majority of "let's make a free and open source alternative to x operating system" projects have barely gotten off the ground. ReactOS isn't just a success story, it's nearly a miracle!

So Haiku, FreeDOS and AROS aren't success stories? They're all cloning* proprietary systems in an open source fashion, and they're all much more feature-complete and stable than ReactOS. I know it's like comparing apples and oranges (with all of them, apart from Haiku, being relatively simple), but the point still stands, ReactOS has been going nowhere fast for years now.

I'm not saying that we should kick Aleksey out of the leadership, i'm just saying that in comparison with other open-source clones*, ReactOS hasn't been keeping up with the pack.

Although, in fairness, Windows is a massive beast to even attempt to reverse engineer, and I take my hat off to any devs who can decipher its implementation. The main thing letting the project down is exposure, developers (which come from exposure), and money (which also come from exposure, and can be used to pay developers and buy marketing material, to gain more exposure).

So basically, what ReactOS needs is better PR, more exposure, more money and more developers. Kicking Aleksey out is going to hinder rather than help.

* I use the term clones to refer to any OS attempting API and ABI compatibility with another operating system

DOSGuy · Post by **DOSGuy** » Tue May 29, 2012 4:56 am

The123king wrote:
DOSGuy wrote:The vast majority of "let's make a free and open source alternative to x operating system" projects have barely gotten off the ground. ReactOS isn't just a success story, it's nearly a miracle!
So Haiku, FreeDOS and AROS aren't success stories? They're all cloning* proprietary systems in an open source fashion, and they're all much more feature-complete and stable than ReactOS. I know it's like comparing apples and oranges (with all of them, apart from Haiku, being relatively simple), but the point still stands, ReactOS has been going nowhere fast for years now.

I didn't say all. Those are some success stories, and then there's E/OS, Freedows, and dozens of projects that never got far enough to meet Wikipedia's notability requirements. I stand by my assertion that most attempts to make FOSS clones of closed source operating systems haven't accomplished very much, especially Windows-like OSes. With all due respect to the FreeDOS team, DOS is a command line operating system, whereas Windows is a GUI-driven OS with a massive API and complex driver system. If others could make a FOSS Windows-like OS, someone would have by now.

ReactOS boots, recognizes a variety of hardware, and runs a fair amount of software fairly well. Most of the big things have been done. Getting from "most stuff kind of works" to 100% compatibility will require endless hours of mind numbing tweaking, debugging, reverse engineering, and documenting undocumented behavior. Like a world class swimmer trains for months to shave 1/10th of a second off his lap times, it will now take exponentially more effort to achieve much smaller gains. The project will appear to be slowing down because perfect compatibility requires reproducing minutiae. It's a thankless job, but every once in a while these small changes will get some piece of software from "not working" to "working" and justify the effort. It's going to be a long, boring job, but it's worth it because ReactOS is so close to being a useful operating system. The development team needs our patience and our support. Let's talk about recruitment, not regime change for change's sake!

Post by **Z98** » Tue May 29, 2012 5:38 am

Considering none of the current team members want to see Aleksey replaced, it's all a moot point.

PurpleGurl · Post by **PurpleGurl** » Tue May 29, 2012 5:56 am

I certainly see no reason to change the project leader.

Post by **EmuandCo** » Tue May 29, 2012 8:59 am

Interesting. BitBucket joins here, has 2 posts and wants us to replace our whole leadership... very brave, man.

Do you know what Aleksey did/does to support this project? Do you have any idea what PR work he did in the past?
He is a very good leader and I absolutley vote AGAINST replacing him.

alfanak.net · Post by **alfanak.net** » Tue May 29, 2012 9:35 am

PurpleGurl wrote:I certainly see no reason to change the project leader.

+1

FiFoMaster · Post by **FiFoMaster** » Tue May 29, 2012 9:43 am

Other projects do an election too. I think, after years of the same leadership someone other shall lead.

Like Debian Reactos-Project could introduce the condorcet-method:

http://www.debian.org/vote/

This is a good sign to the poeple out there, an open project with opened team.

PascalDragon · Post by **PascalDragon** » Tue May 29, 2012 10:21 am

FiFoMaster wrote:Other projects do an election too. I think, after years of the same leadership someone other shall lead.

What use would it have to vote a new leader if the majority of those people that develop ReactOS don't want to replace the current one?

So from me a -1 as well.

Regards,
Sven