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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.'"
You have to choose Paul...
Isn't that what the OS stands for?
*ta dit boom*
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.'
No Paul, it's one thing to have people work for you for free, it's another for them want some kind of compensation for it.
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.'"
Same here. I don't think linux will really take off til you can count the number of distros on one hand. One point not mentioned is all of the distros dilute the talent pool too much, too.
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.
Obviously, you've never had to give Microsoft's support line a call...
Just because an OS is being supported in different variations from different companies isn't going to deminish the support options, it's going to expand them.
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
Since when does having multiple distributions constitue "fragmentation"? Its still the same core OS, just with different packages and installations.
Feed the need: Digitaladdiction.net
Open Source: Where old software goes to die!
I thought they went to Computer Associates? [1]
Yes... because... RISC OS is a huge financial success that has launched many big name companies and is all the rage in the computer world... whereas Linux was just a big disaster... errrm...
Open source isn't about letting people see the source so they can work for you for free. It only works because they are getting something out of it too. Who wants to hack on something when you know it's just going to get locked up and you have to pay for the privilege of getting the new version with your changes in?
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
I would say to the RISC OS folks that maybe you could do a Creative Commons license thing with it. That way you could open it and still retain some semblance of attribution and control. Possibly even make a buck off the "officially endorsed" version that rolls in all the user mods, etc. under the same licensing.
C|N>K
One neat thing about making it open source is that it will continue to live on forever, even if there is some big hiatus where nobody works on it.
That's the case with BSD -- although the market share is small, it simply can't be killed off (unless all the BSD guys die off). Even RMS admits as much -- as much as it would be nice if the developers all worked on one thing for the common good, there's just no way to kil off BSD and force people to bow down to the Penguin.
Same thing with Dragonfly -- I'd be happy if they could somehow work with the NetBSD folks -- but instead, there is the Dragonfly version of BSD, and there's nothing that I, RMS or Billy Gates can do about it.
http://www.thebricktestament.com/the_law/when_to_
If I keep going I'll spill my beer down my long white beard.
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.
I'm surprised that no one has mentioned the fact that RISC OS would be an amazing fit for an ARM based PDA. Add one of those cool laser keyboards and you'd have pretty much a "real" computer with a full gui in only a couple of megs of code. None of the Linux based PDAs are as "lite" and I know for sure WinCe/Pocket Pee Cee isn't as tiny.
Open Source it, I say! I imagine there would be some very interesting projects spun off from the code base.
-Anonymous Coward
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.
Companies that dare support Linux will support Redhat and SuSE and maybe one other, so it's mostly irrelevant that there are millions of other distros.
The talent pool may get diluted, but mostly this isn't the case IMO. You could argue the talent pool for car manufacturers is diluted because there are so many different companies! There are good projects/distros and this is where the talent flock, if there isn't room left due to them being too popular, the talent will go to the next best distro/project. The really talented people start there own projects/distros/companies.
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!
Though I do not use the OS regular anymore, I'm still an active (and paying) supporter of it just because I don't want to see it vanish. RISC OS is a great OS and has a lot of potential. But it needs so much renovation; I hardly believe that a small company like RISC OS Ltd. can do this on its own.
So, to answer the question: Yes, it definitely should be made open source!
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
if you're worried about support, the number of supported distros for business in any given part of the world *are* countable on one hand. For example, here I am in the middle of the U.S.A. and I can locally get paid support for RedHat, SuSE and Debian. There might be some other minor player out there, but I've not seen it used by business or government here. What's so complicated about that?
http://www.drobe.co.uk/extra/geminuswideboy-huge.j pg
(Voice of Jennifer Anniston) OH MY GAWD!(/voice) Hasn't this guy seen what open source has done to revive dead/dying systems? Of course, they have to write the GPL correctly, but fer cryin' out loud, hasn't Open Source proved itself as a viable revenue generation model? RISC operating systems would be great for those appliance applications where a full-up OS doesn't fit, like toasters and automobiles, for example. And Oh, by the way, protect the "rights' of those who developed it.
Evil Overlord Rule #86. I will make sure that my doomsday device is up to code and properly grounded.
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.
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?
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/
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.
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
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.