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.'"

Comments

RISC OS? Hey, I remember that!

[KillQuentin]

This is so freaky - I worked on RISC OS many, many years ago. We managed to write a pretty damn good desktop OS and fit it into a MB or two. Modern PCs have 1000 times as much memory, 100 times as many CPU cycles, 10000 times as much disc space. I have to admit that modern PCs are better now, buy only if you force me to.

If I keep going I'll spill my beer down my long white beard.

AmigaOS shall rise again!

[Just Some Guy]

Don't give up hope, RiscOS! You're this close to following AmigaOS's meteoric rise to desktop dominance. Don't loosen your death grip on that code base! Amiga didn't, and now they're poised to overtake Windows any month now. Remember, sharing your code is admitting defeat. Why go the way of the dodo when you can shine in the spotlight like Amiga!

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.