I was at FreeOS.com and found two interesting projects that are in the works now: OpenWindows http://www.owpcentral.com/ and ReactOS http://www.reactos.com/, which are both trying to develop a Windows compatible OS. Are there any legal issues with someone making a 100% Windows compatible OS? And if they ever really get off the ground, will it end Linux hopes becoming a desktop OS?
Can’t answer the Linux question because no one can tell. But, yes, they could make an operating system that mimics Windows without copyright/trademark issues. Windows code is copyrighted, but if you write your own code that does exactly the same thing, you’re in the clear (it’s happened before with a version of DOS). Microsoft might conceivably try to get you for copying their “look and feel,” but that has very little chance of success (I think Microsoft is on record as defending the concept that “look and feel” isn’t protected, since Apple sued them about it – though I may have that backwards. In any case, the suit was thrown out.)
as long as it’s reverse-engineered (like supermarket cola is supposedly a reverse-engineered version of The Real Thing™), then it shouldn’t be a problem, if they were to copy or plagiarise actual Windows code, then that woudl be a problem.
here’s a good example of how not to do reverse engineering:
Palm claiming Olivetti’s Royal daVinci is no original
Try searching for old news reports (use Google) on the Sony versus Connectix case over “Virtual Gamestation” (a Sony Playstation clone, via software, for the Macintosh [and maybe PeeCee, now]).
Granted, there’s no “look and feel,” but the heart of an O/S is below the monitor anyway.
Connectix won.
Another example is Executor, a program for the PC that will run Macintosh applications. Apple owns not only the MacOS (the operating system that comes shrink-wrapped in a software box) but also the Toolbox code in ROM (until recently, on chips in the computer itself, now installed along with the OS I believe), and no one can write a “clone” that involved distributing unlicensed copies of the OS or the Toolbox; but Executor is legal because it was reverse-engineered and doesn’t use the MacOS or the Toolbox to run the Mac programs.
(On the other hand, it only ran something like 75% of the programs it was designed to run, and it was only designed to execute 68K code that made no System-7 specific calls. So it was a moderately compatible System 6 replacement that ran on a PC).
At one time they were planning on making a version that would execute PowerPC code and handle System 7 and 8 calls, but I don’t know that they ever got anywhere with it.
Other Mac emulators require you to install your own (legally acquired) copy of the Mac ROM and then install your own (legallly purchased) copy of the MacOS, which is a different approach. But I digress.