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

Of course it should be Open Sourced.

[GeorgeMcBay]

RISC OS is completely irrelevant to the real world, so of course it should follow in the footsteps of Xara, InterBase, etc.

Open Source: Where old software goes to die!

Re:RISC OS? Hey, I remember that!

[KillShill]

the only problem being that RiscOS doesn't run on modern co mputers.

so it's not the useful...