Community Purpose

This Community and its forums is maintained by OSR Open Systems Resources, Inc. as a public service for the overall benefit of the professional Windows system software development community. The purpose of the Community is to facilitate communication among peers who design and develop Windows drivers of all types, including file system Minifilters and file systems. The goal of the forum is to allow professional practicing engineers to assist each other with problems, issues, and policies. It’s also intended as a place to have focused discussions regarding Windows OS architecture, driver design and development, file system and Minifilter design and development, debugging issues, and best practices.

The Community is specifically NOT for extended debates and discussions, and we tend not to appreciate answers that start with “In Linux, we do it this way” or “On Android, this would be easy.”

Community History and Background

You can read more about the Community and its history here: Developer Community – OSR.

This is a Civilized Place for Public Discussion

We are a respectful, inclusive, community. We, as a community, will not tolerate behavior that disrespects, harasses, abuses, shames, denigrates, mocks, or otherwise marginalizes any of our members. We will not accept trolling, insulting or derogatory comments, or personal or political attacks. We will also not accept rude, abusive, or offensive user names on this forum.

Incidents of inappropriate conduct on the list will result in that member, and perhaps all members from the offender’s company, being permanently banned from the community.

Inappropriate Behavior

  1. Commercial postings - This is a technical community, and the only posts that are allowed are technical in nature. Please don’t post advertisements or announcements for your products, services, or activities to the forums. Your posting will NOT be considered technical (and thus legitimate), just because it starts with “I just wanted all you to know that we’ve released a new version of” some software. On the other hand, if somebody posts question saying “Can anybody recommend a good XYZ?”, it’s perfectly fine to answer “Yeah, we make XYZ’s and we think they’re pretty cool. Please contact me directly for more info.”

  2. Job solicitations - Not from commercial concerns looking for developers, not from head hunters, not from small companies, not from people looking for work, not from consultants looking for clients, not from consultants looking to offer their services to solve a specific problem.

  3. Requests for, or offers of, or inquiries about paid consulting services - We consider these commercial postings, and are therefore not allowed. If you’re interested in more information about hiring OSR or any other consultant on the forum to help with a problem, please email directly or visit the appropriate web site. If you’re a consultant, and you’re only willing to (further) help a poster on a paid basis, a good way to communicate this might be to say “What you’re asking is beyond that scope of what I can help you with on a forum.” Do not email them and offer your services (that would be a really major violation of the terms of this forum).

  4. Salary, consulting rate or price discussions - Something about the laws here in the States about price fixing comes into play here. Please just don’t do it.

  5. Use of the email addresses or names of Community members for “direct mail advertising” or business solicitation of any type.

  6. Asking about how to implement malware, or requesting help with techniques that are commonly used for the implementation of malware. The members here are not interested in helping with, and the forum will not support, the development of malware or anything that looks like or could be used as malware. This is true even when done under the premise of “this is for my personal learning.” While we do not want to discourage questions from bona fide security researchers, it’s often hard to distinguish between requests from legit defenders from those of black-hat offensive actors. Our policy is to err on the side of caution, and treat all such queries with suspicion. Sorry.

  7. Anything that, in the judgment of the moderators, is not in keeping with the overall spirit and purpose of the Community or is not in the best interest of the Windows system software development community as a whole.

Improve the Discussion

Help us make this a great place for discussion by always adding something positive to the discussion, however small. If you are not sure your post adds to the conversation, think over what you want to say and try again later.

One way to improve the discussion is by discovering ones that are already happening. Spend time browsing the topics here before replying or starting your own, and you’ll have a better chance of meeting others who share your interests.

The topics discussed here matter to us, and we want you to act as if they matter to you, too. Be respectful of the topics and the people discussing them, even if you disagree with some of what is being said.

Your Participation Counts

The conversations we have here set the tone for every new arrival. Help us influence the future of this community by choosing to engage in discussions that make this forum an interesting place to be — and avoiding those that do not.

The forum provides tools that enable the community to collectively identify the best (and worst) contributions: bookmarks, likes, flags, replies, edits, watching, muting and so forth. Use these tools to improve your own experience, and everyone else’s, too.

Let’s leave our community better than we found it.

If You See a Problem, Flag It

Moderators have special authority; they can help to manage the forum and ensure its smooth running. With your help, moderators can be community facilitators, not just janitors or police.

When you see bad behavior, don’t reply. Replying encourages bad behavior by acknowledging it, consumes your energy, and wastes everyone’s time. Just flag it. If enough flags accrue, action will be taken, either automatically or by moderator intervention.

In order to maintain our community, moderators reserve the right to remove any content and any user account for any reason at any time. Moderators do not preview new posts; the moderators and site operators take no responsibility for any content posted by the community.

Students, Hobbyists, Dilettantes, and Dabblers

While we are first and foremost a community of working, professional, system software developers we absolutely welcome (and encourage, even!) questions from students, hobbyists, and those who wish to dabble in the field of Windows drivers. If you’re a student, or if you’re asking a question out of general curiosity or academic interest, we ask you to please say so in your post. Also, please don’t ask us to do your homework for you. We mean that in both the literal sense (you shouldn’t bring assignments from your professors here for us to solve for you) and also the more figurative sense (please do some independent research on your problem before asking us here).

Keep It Tidy

Make the effort to put things in the right place, so that we can spend more time discussing and less cleaning up. So:

  • Don’t start a topic in the wrong category; please read the category definitions.
  • Don’t cross-post the same thing in multiple topics.
  • Don’t post no-content replies.
  • Don’t divert a topic by changing it midstream.
  • Don’t sign your posts — every post has your profile information attached to it.

Rather than posting “+1” or “Agreed”, use the Like button. Rather than taking an existing topic in a radically different direction, use Reply as a Linked Topic.

Post Only Your Own Stuff

You may not post anything digital that belongs to someone else without permission. You may not post descriptions of, links to, or methods for stealing someone’s intellectual property (software, video, audio, images), or for breaking any other law.

Powered by You

This site is operated by your friendly local staff and you, the community. If you have any further questions about how things should work here, open a new topic in the Announcements and Admin category and let’s discuss! If there’s a critical or urgent issue that can’t be handled by a meta topic or flag, contact an admin via the staff page.

Terms of Service

Yes, legalese is boring, but we must protect ourselves – and by extension, you and your data – against unfriendly folks. We have a Terms of Service describing your (and our) behavior and rights related to content, privacy, and laws. To use this service, you must agree to abide by our TOS.