Reactos-libre

The free GNU distributions list contains a number of GNU/Linux distributions, -- operating systems which include a package manager and a repository with free software. And the free non-GNU systems list only contains Replicant. (Check the free software definition.)

As Microsoft Windows is a popular desktop operating system, there is a rich ecosystem of free software written for it. Such software includes, for example,

  • PuTTy - a free implementation of Telnet, SSH, and Rlogin for Win32 and Unix platforms, along with an xterm terminal emulator
  • WinSCP (TODO add to the directory)
  • WinDirStat (TODO add to the directory)
  • ...

The ReactOS project has a potential to liberate such ecosystem from depending on the evil proprietary platform by providing an alternative, Windows-compatible platform these programs can run on. This site is dedicated to hosting a liberated version of ReactOS (and, if it is necessary, its documentation) as a mirror.

Guidelines and requirements

The free system distribution guidelines (GNU FSDG) requires that the system is

  1. self-hosting "must be able to develop and build the system with tools that the system provides you. As a result, a free system distribution cannot include free software that can only be built by using nonfree software" - think ok, need to check
  2. complete in itself and ready to use - ok
  3. free in itself - ok
  4. provides no instructions on installing non-free software - not ok - links to non-free software in its install software program (Rapps) - need to make a new reactos image to fix this
  5. no nonfree firmware - ok
  6. documentation released freely - ok (at the wiki at least)
  7. documentation contains no pointers to non-free software - ?
  8. please teach users about free software - ?