Comment by mcdow
11 hours ago
from the faq: > Is this... legally sketchy? No. Consider projects like ReactOS, a from-scratch effort to create an OS compatible with Microsoft Windows, GNUstep, which provides an open implementation of Cocoa APIs and other things, or Darling, a compatibility layer for running Darwin (macOS) binaries on Linux. ravynOS is similar and stands on the shoulders of many such projects.
as far as i understand it, most companies don’t bother sending cease and desists to projects you’ve never heard of. the fact that the aforementioned projects have avoided the banhammer of Apple should not be an indication that a successful MacOS clone would receive the same treatment.
but on the other hand, maybe that’s a champagne problem. if you can make a macos clone good enough to get the attention of Apple, you’ve already done something incredible.
Wine and Proton are more popular than all of these examples combined and even have corporate sponsors, yet Microsoft hasn’t tried to stop them.
can’t speak for Proton, but it’s no wonder Windows doesn’t see Wine as a threat. because Wine sucks to run. any normal person would just run Windows instead of having to fool with Wine. it’s for us hobbyists, because we don’t mind a little pain.
Wine is an integral part of Proton, so they do see it as a threat.
Proton provides a better Windows runtime than Windows itself nowadays. Many games using legacy DirectX versions run perfectly fine on Linux, but need patches on Windows 11.
I think the core of this is google vs oracle case. I think they'll be in the clear unless they hit some specific (design?) patents.
I think the better example is actually GNU, which endured several challenges as a clean room implementation of unix. I think this is legally sound, but IANAL.
Microsoft definitely know about ReactOS.
not saying $TECHCO doesn’t know about X project. i’m just saying that if the average person doesn’t know about it, it’s unlikely to get shut down, as it poses no threat.