XSOS 0.3 - could be GPL Violation?

[v8YKxgHe]

Hey,

A friend of mine linked me to a forum topic about XSOS 0.3, (http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=125713) an operating system that supports Dx10 and can run all Windows programs natively, they apparently did a deal with Microsoft and they helped implement Dx10, which I find hard to believe.

While this may be all good and well, I feel it could be violating the GPL License. There is a similar project, ReactOS (http://www.reactos.org/en/index.html), that aims to be a legal reversed engineered version of WinXP. ReactOS's current version is 0.3, the same as XSOS.

I find it hard to believe that what appears to be 1 person coding, has created an entire OS that can run Windows programs natively with DX10 support. What I think he has done is taken the ReactOS source-code, used that as a base and called it something else, which is all legal. But XSOS is closed-source, so this means if he did take ReactOS as a base and made it closed source that would be a GPL violation. I have posted in the topic and have tried to PM him about this but he will not reply, which makes me think he's trying to hide something :p

Is there anything we can do to make sure he's not using the GPL'ed code and then making it closed-source, which is violating the gpl license?

[Tomosaur]

Nothing much at all, unless there's a reasonable case for infringement. You'd have to examine and compare the two OSes very closely before having grounds for a case/lawsuit/whatever. I personally have never heard of XSOS.

[deanlinkous]

Unless you are a copyright holder you have no authority to do anything really. The only thing you can do is bring it to the attention of the FSF and/or gpl-violations.org.

Seems a bit strange to me....

http://nnstep.com/

[tageiru]

This is not a violation of the GPL, it is just some attention seeking kid who has taken windows and changed some of its graphics and taken bits and pieces out.

His statements that it has a unix-like kernel and that he has implemented the win32 api are just lies.

[Mateo]

i'm calling hoax.

[agurk]

Thanks for reminding me about ReactOS. Throw some money at the good folks over there if you have any to spare, they have a fund raising going on currently.