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Should RISC OS be Open Sourced?
An anonymous reader writes "Aficionados of RISC OS are in a dilemma. With RISC OS Ltd, one of the main developers of the OS, in financial trouble, should RISC OS be open sourced? Users and developers say yes, citing the current slow development of the platform in the hands of its owners. However, Paul Middleton, RISC OS Ltd MD, said, 'It is one thing to release software as open source so that people can look at the source code and help sort out the troublesome problems that "many hands can make light work of". It is completely another to simply say that the source should be freely available to anyone to do with as they like.' Paul also had reservations regarding 'the fragmentation seen in the open source world, such as the number of different Linux distributions and end user support nightmare entailed from that situation.'"
For those of you looking for a RISC-like experience under linux, be sure to look at the ROX Desktop. I've personally never used RISC, but I have fallen in love with ROX, using it, along with Xfce, on all of my machines. Together, the make a fast, modern desktop that knocks the socks off the other, traditional desktops
Robert Bindler
A Computer Science student's views on technology.
This is a false logic that is the result of several assumptions...
1. "Developers" from 1-2 person "distros" would be able to contribute anything of use to the larger distros.
2. It is easy to contribute in a meaningful way to any of the larger distros.
3. The talents of each of the "developers" of the smaller distros would not overlap to such an extent as to render the discussion meaningless.
4. That the "developers" behind smaller distros would contribute to the larger distros in the absense of their own. This one in particular is a lofty assumption... many people would rather be a big fish in a small sea or not "develop" at all.
5. That "developers" translates to "coders". It is precisely for this reason that "developers" appears in quotes throughout this post. Because I think many of these "developers" are in actually better described as "repackagers" and "slight modifiers" and "rebranders" and so would be of little or no value to the larger distros.
I would suggest that all of these assumptions are false to some extent, some more so then others. The very nature of volunteer/hobby work unfortunately often means that the work must prove interesting to the volunteer. Or if the work is boring, that the end goal be considered by the volunteer to be worthwhile.
I just don't see any evidence that the banning of smaller projects (were this even possible) would (a) be a good thing, (b) result in more coders for the larger projects or (c) result in any major benefit for the open source community in general. But I see a lot to suggest drawing conclusions to the contrary.
I love RISC OS, got a machine under my desk which runs version 4.03, yes I couln't justify the cost of Select while unemployed, and now... well it's not really worth upgrading it.
I'd love to have the opertunity to tinker with what makes RISC OS tick, and to see things like ADFS supported on linux properly, which can only come though a open specification or open code.
My worry wouln't be fragmentation, usually one fragment dies off, and effort moves to another when it's proved to be better, or not... and if the community splits and works on two diferent things, then obviously the community was split originally and now at least theve both got the OS they prefer. My worry would be no one picking it up and doing anything with it.
RISC OS's greatest weakness is its back-end. The back-end should really have been re-written a very long time ago to include pre-emptive multi-tasking and proper memory protection. Putting most of the OS in ROM made it incredibly easy to fix a broken machine within barely a few minutes, and considering it was sold as an educational machine, upgrading was usually done by a professional anyway.
Despite these setbacks, RISC OS's main advantage is its front-end. The drag-and-drop system and anti-aliased fonts were years ahead of anything else when they first came out, and all the applications were self-contained, making it possible to treat an application like a file and allowing for very easy application installation and uninstallation. The filemanager is also one of the best I have ever used due to its reponsiveness and simplicity.
If it could be open-sourced and have its back-end replaced with something a lot more modern, there should still be a large userbase for it considering that it has a very responsive, intuitive and simple user interface in sharp contrast to operating systems such as Windows.
First, it's moot. OK? Not mute.
Second: http://www.iyonix.com/ - RISC OS Desktop computer with USB2, support for a multi-head display system, 10/100/1000 networking.
Do your research before posting about OSes you don't use, mkay?
Third: ah, the laptop issue. I believe laptops come in 2 flavours: x86 and PPC. Would you care to design a third flavour? from the ground up? thought not. The fact that it's an emulated OS is the real moot point. The architecture to run it natively doesn't exist, so they made an emulator. Darned sight quicker than PearPC too. And, as you correctly point out, it's an XP laptop. So it'll run linux too, idiot. As to the price: 2 commercial OSes on one machine costs more than the same machine with only one OS? Surely not!
The OP seems to have confused RISC OS Ltd with Castle Technology Ltd, they aren't the same company. It is Castle that are having cash flow problems - there engineering dept. walked out not being paid for some time See http://www.drobe.co.uk/riscos/artifact1461.html
Second: http://www.iyonix.com/ - RISC OS Desktop computer with USB2, support for a multi-head display system, 10/100/1000 networking.
From that URL:
16-BIT SOUND
RISC OS 5 has full support for 16-bit sound and is able to play multiple concurrent sound tracks.
NETWORK STACK
Full industry standard support for a wide range of networking protocols. With TCP/IP and DHCP built in, connecting is easy.
16 million colour support now up to 2048 x 1536 pixels (was 800 x 600 pixels)
Dude... This OS and hardware used to provide you with photo like graphics, with real-time video capture at a time where a fucking PC could just bear CGA. And look at where it stands now ? 16 bit sound? 16million colours? And you think its not deprecated?
As to that machine; I can see that you don't actually own one. Thats not USB 2.0 my friend, its USB compatible and if you take a little effort you'll see that all those supported devices are USB 1.0 downwards compatible.
As to the laptop: sure. It maybe all so casual for you, fact is that they promised a PC running on fullblown RiscOS back then, multiple times, and could deliver nothing more than a frickin' XP machine. You can talk all you want but the fact that they promised a full product and couldn't do better than a emulator says more than enough.
Its mute... Yeah, you think I mean moot. Mute. One text processor, one graphic image program, one picture viewer.. Get real.
It has a decent built-in BASIC with easy access to system calls, which makes building WIMP (GUI) applications extremely straightforward even for total beginners -- or at least that's how I found it as a kid fourteen years ago, and stuck with it until it made more economic sense to build a PC from components.
:)
Since then the rest of the world has accelerated, and RISC OS has been playing catch-up for a long time. It does what it does competently, I found it very intuitive and a great learning tool, but the only appeal for me these days would be nostalgia and to catch up with a few old hands in the community, who still seem to be mainstays judging by the site I just stumbled upon.
All just personal opinion, of course. Consume with salt.
Ph-nglui mglw'nafh Gates M'dna wgah'nagl fhtagn.
Cut + paste link. redirects to thief.jpg otherwise ... Lame
Well, RISC OS did launch a mom and pop chip designer, run by people with no experience of processor design, called Acorn Risc Machines, or ARM (the A changed in meaning along the way), and whose chip design now appears in more devices worldwide than Intel processors. Has linux turned the hardware world upside down yet?
The really ironic thing is that RISC OS was supposed to be Un*x, but whichever American university Acorn subcontracted to write it (California?) dropped the ball. It's a pity, as the original spec would have been OS X on RISC hardware in the mid 80s.
I used my RISC PC only the other day to do some vector graphics work that is still a pain with Linux. In many ways it's still a wonderful platform, but, realistically, it has no mainstream future whatever the licencing arrangements, because there will never be enough people writing for it.
Virtually serving coffee
Yes, the embedded world.
The British equivalent is probably "do a runner and start up in a dodgy tax haven like the Isle of Man or Gibraltar". Let's see if anyone bothers to read this, and if so moderates it flamebait.
Anyway, the point is that neither the original post nor the reply appear to be by people who actually understand very much about business, on either side of the Atlantic. And they've been moderated up, presumably by equally ill-informed people.
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
In the UK, 'Chapter 11' is closer to Administration, temporary protection from creditors. The Administrator's (third party specialist Accountant) job is to seek best value for the creditors. Going concerns generally raise more value than broken up assets, so he will try to do that. If he cannot settle the debts the company is wound-up through a liquidation by an Insolvency practitioner. Brankrupty is a different process for Individuals who cannot pay their depts.
http://www.insolvency.gov.uk/
For reference, I wrote the original article which sparked this discussion. Most of what I said has little to do with what's being discussed here. Mostly I advocated open souring parts of RISC OS (or developing free replacements for bits of it) in order to further development. Here's the article:
http://riscos.blog.com/356092/
A .5 GHz XScale would make for a good RISCOS experience. However, a high-powered (battery-sucking) Pentium emulator is likely to run at a workablespeed too. And no ARM, StrongARM, XScale is going to outperform a mainstream x86 in native desktop speed, simply because it was neither designed or taylored for it and did not have the momentum to evolve on the same scale.
More importantly, however, is that an emulator is only software. This is relatively cheap to develop and VERY cheap to produce, whereas any hardware development is quite expensive. You could easily spend you first 50.000 on selecting the SBC that best suits your needs. (not just getting the boards, but invetsing time to study them. Then you need to either port a licensend version of the OS to the new hardware (or emulate RISCOS compliant hardware). By that time , the SBC may not be available any more, spec may have changed, etc. Even on relatively simple systems under high time presure with adequate staff (like in case of tomtom go navigator) this seldomly takes less than a year.
You will have burned close to half a million, sans marketing and you'll probably make less than 100 per item shipped. Ie. this won't work for a market as small as RISCOS. Compare this to any skilled software engineer writing an ARM emulator in a few weeks or months. (Actually, some decent emulators are already available for free.
http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_Softgun_ARM_Emulator
http://www.skyeye.org/index.shtml
http://www.arm.com/support/ARMulator.html