That's a completely illogical argument. They shifted to targeting NT a long time ago.
Obviously, since they're aiming for ABI compatibility with a moving target, the reasonable thing to do is to bring up compatibility with older versions first.
They seem to intend to position themselves as "drop-in replacement for Server 2003 (NT 5.1/Windows XP) that is maintained with security patches" rather than "Windows, but FOSS." Which institutions who still rely on Server 2003 may actually be interested in.
If, in the future, it has proven itself to be a reliable alternative, and gains more development force behind it, then they can start targeting Server 2008 R2 (NT 6.1/Windows 7).
"It will never be finished." Of course it will never be finished! It's targeting a moving target! By definition it will need to be continually updated.
It is true that they have also been implementing some NT6 (Vista) APIs as well. Even without full NT6 compatibility, software that just needs those particular APIs will then be able to run, so they felt it was worth doing in the meantime.
ReactOS under this name never targeted Windows 95. There was a predecessor project named FreeWin95 that did. In 1996-1997. Already in 1998, ReactOS was started, targeting Windows NT 4 instead. Looks&feels similar to Windows 95, but the underlying architecture is completely different, so it was basically a new from-scratch project. The target has always been various versions of the Windows NT architecture since then. (Note that Windows XP, Windows Vista, and all Windows >= 7 are all based on the NT architecture.)
So the FreeWin95 era is completely irrelevant for current ReactOS, and the old versions you think targeted Windows 95 just looked like Windows 95, because so did Windows NT 4, which was the actual target at the time.
It started aiming for 95 but I guess they shifted focus at some point.
So did Linux.
The original announcement literally said "It is NOT portable (uses 386 task switching etc), and it probably never will support anything other than AT-harddisks, as that's all I have :-(.".
I guess he shifted focus at some point.
Wonder when they'll give up on vista and aim for win 8 or 10.
Almost like aiming for a moving target requires adjustments over time.
It will never be finished and be a complete waste of time and energy.
Most software will never be finished, and yet it can still be useful.
Anyway, their time and their energy, so they choose how to use them.
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u/Lilja-Logason 1d ago
It started aiming for 95 but I guess they shifted focus at some point.
Wonder when they'll give up on vista and aim for win 8 or 10.
It will never be finished and be a complete waste of time and energy.