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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.'"
Though one has to realized, that the vast majority of linux distributions are often small and specialized to one specific use. The distributions worthy of running on the desktop, CAN be counted on one hand - atleast if you ask me.
:)
Debian, Slackware, SuSe... uhm, are there any others?
Does anyone really use RISC OS? What does it offer that other (free) alternatives don't?
" and giving all of his IP away for free will fix this?!?"
What does he have to lose? Plus his competitors will have to compete against free/open source. He, and others, may be able to reenter the market if the community advances the code.
If I keep going I'll spill my beer down my long white beard.
Why not just do it and see how it turns out? Not like they've got much left to lose at this point. Besides, the GPL2 doesn't say you _can't_ sell it for money, just that you can't stop other people giving it away.
They could start by making an x86 version. Then we'll see how much YellowTab is really worth.
http://www.drobe.co.uk/extra/geminuswideboy-huge.j pg
Side note: I actually have a copy of Amiga Forever, which is a licensed set of AmigaOS packages and various applications bundled with UAE (an Amiga emulator). I burned a copy of the new release CD a few weeks ago but had forgotten to eject it from the burner in my server. I rebooted said server a couple days ago to upgrade my FreeBSD kernel and left the room for a few minutes. When I came back, I was staring at an Amiga screen. Seems the CD is actually built on Knoppix, and it auto-configures X and then fires up UAE. Freaked me out to find a ghost of my past staring at me at 2:00 AM.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
"Do a runner and start up in a dodgy tax haven"? I think not. It would be a criminal offence in the UK for the directors of a company to move its assets offshore to avoid insolvency.
Historically you're right that there hasn't really been an equivalent of Chapter 11 in the UK - our bankruptcy procedures have been ways of managing the end of a company, and it's been rare for a company which goes into administration to emerge intact. The Enterprise Act 2000 created a more flexibile regime, but it's pretty much untried as yet, and in any event not as debtor-friendly as Chapter 11.
It has a fantastic UI and was in its day a supurb platform [..] but it no longer suits my needs and the OS architecture is frankly antiquated despite various moves in the past to drag it up into the modern world (notably some attempts to introduce pre-emptive multitasking and the Hydra multiprocessor boards).
...If only they had done so - I guess it could have been a viable complement to Linux which IMHO lacked a decent GUI until at least 2000. The rest of the OS -though a bit entangled with the hardware - had great design quality as well. (snif)
Couldn't agree more. My father is a RISCOS devotee as well. Recently bought an Iyonic and actually *uses* it as well on a dayly basis. Personally I think even Microsoft Windows has moved beyond any competitive advantage RISCOS has or might have had. Although IMHO archimedes and especially the ARM processor had great design value; I just can't imagine using ARM-based hardware for running RISCOS instead of Linux.
To me, RISCOS died when I found out RISCOS3 yet again depended on cooperative multitasking. (I guess, that's about the same time the Hydra thing turned out to be vapourware and BeOS became hype). With intel processors quickly catching up on ARM it became evident that only radical changes could keep Archimedes on rails. But the uninspiring A5000 lacked soft and hardware features to compete in any way with Apple or even Microsoft (even in early nineties).
I remember speaking to an Acorn representative a few years later, probing him as to whether their business was still viable. He told me they were still planning pre-emptive scheduling and multiprocessors. (Not a word about 26-bit issues.) I asked about opensourcing RISCOS in case they'd go bust. He frowned but admitted the'd played with the idea.
Open source RISCOS (or what's left of it)
A couple of years ago - when Acorn was still Acorn (well, actually Olivetti) - a representative hinted to open sourcing the OS in case they'd go bust. At that time the downward spiral was pretty evident, and he didn't seem to think the monetary value of the OS' IP was worth much anyway due to their small market share.
That's not the way things went, unfortunately. Far from it. In my opinion the IP has been the hostage victim of a number of quarreling dinosaurs - RISC OS Ltd. and Pace being the most prominent parties. For obvious budget reasons nothing worth mentioning has evolved on the RISCOS front for the last decade, while a lot of disapointed developers and users have turned
to open source alternatives.
Free RISCOS now! Open *all* sources - and let's hope it's not too late...
Nothing irks me more than the "most popular = best" mentality...
Well, there certainly are more important things in my life to irk about than "most popular = best" mentality. OK, I agree on matters like x86 being better than all other architectures simply because it's used predominantly or even because its the fastest (in desktopland). x86 is shite on almost all design aspects. ARM has great design value, as do Sparc, Power and Alpha.
That said, it's also kind of sad to watch what's left of the Acorn/Archimedes/Iyonic community. I guess there ARE some "merits that make RISCOS an attractive alternative", but with close to no life left these merits are getting smaller and smaller compared to vivacious "free alternatives" (Linux, BSD).
On topic of the orig article, what merits does RISCOS have that it would loose if it were open sourced? Or conversely, what companies have found a viable way to profit from its IP and get development back on rails? Or why would anyone without innate affinity to Acorn or its legacy be tempted to switch to it?
Many developers have begged Acorn to open source stuff when they proved unable to further develop it. Given the fringe nature and the hostage on IP, I - for one - moved on.