I respect this project from the technical perspective, but can anyone tell me what it is actually good for? What is your use case for ReactOS?
To me it seems like "Windows, but open-source", which sounded cool, so I installed it on a virtual machine, then tried to install Firefox on it... nope, the current versions of Firefox are not supporting this... but luckily there is an old version of Firefox provided with the system... but when I try to download something from SourceForge, the website rejects the old Firefox... so I gave up.
Did anyone have better luck, or a different approach?
It's not useful, nor is it open source. It's a leaked copy of the Windows source code from a long time ago that has been hacked on. You can look up the "history" of it and how it has symbol names for companies with whom Microsoft worked to solve specific application issues. Microsoft knows that no company would be crazy enough to rely on it, so no point in getting bad press trying to kill it.
"It's a leaked copy of the Windows source code from a long time ago that has been hacked on."
That's a claim that... at best it seems that hasn't yet gathered behind it enough motivation to clarify anything, and at worst is just a plain malicious FUD. It doesn't even matter, when you think about it. Even if we'd assume a legal accusation of leaked-resembling code in all that pile of modules, all that ReactOS team needs to do is to formally contract reimplementations by independent teams for any of those allegedly guilty modules. In this light, such an accusation is very unlikely to happen, and probably there won't be even a half-baked effort to officially demand clarifying and putting any potential issues to rest. So, about those people out there with an interest in painting ReactOS as plagued by leaked code, entertaining this uncertainty is all they'll do, nothing more.
"You can look up the «history» of it and how it has symbol names for companies with whom Microsoft worked to solve specific application issues."
I assume you aren't going yourself to provide a reference to what you're alluding to in that public repository?
To me it seems like "Windows, but open-source", which sounded cool, so I installed it on a virtual machine, then tried to install Firefox on it... nope, the current versions of Firefox are not supporting this... but luckily there is an old version of Firefox provided with the system... but when I try to download something from SourceForge, the website rejects the old Firefox... so I gave up.
Did anyone have better luck, or a different approach?
That's a claim that... at best it seems that hasn't yet gathered behind it enough motivation to clarify anything, and at worst is just a plain malicious FUD. It doesn't even matter, when you think about it. Even if we'd assume a legal accusation of leaked-resembling code in all that pile of modules, all that ReactOS team needs to do is to formally contract reimplementations by independent teams for any of those allegedly guilty modules. In this light, such an accusation is very unlikely to happen, and probably there won't be even a half-baked effort to officially demand clarifying and putting any potential issues to rest. So, about those people out there with an interest in painting ReactOS as plagued by leaked code, entertaining this uncertainty is all they'll do, nothing more.
"You can look up the «history» of it and how it has symbol names for companies with whom Microsoft worked to solve specific application issues."
I assume you aren't going yourself to provide a reference to what you're alluding to in that public repository?