Comment by mschuster91
4 months ago
What I don't really get about ReactOS is... why did they not go for the route of focusing on getting the Windows binary compatibility layer for drivers working first? I 'member some horrible WINE plus other stuff layer for NDIS network drivers to be used on Linux, so the theory should work out.
That way, they could have used allll the existing Windows drivers there are, by prompting the user to insert a legitimate Windows CD to pull them from (similar to how OpenTTD or Doom ask for the original asset files) they wouldn't need to take care of copyright as well...
Most likely, it didn't happen (yet) due to kernel related stuff being still actively worked on¹ and (more importantly) due to a shortage of developers willing and capable to tackle that kind of challenge.
¹ At the time of this writing, there are open PRs like this one: https://github.com/reactos/reactos/pull/8422