Later today, a RISCOS Ltd. shareholders' meeting will be held in secret, where it's believed that the Castle-RISCOS Ltd. dispute will be further discussed. It's hoped that a solution will be found to end the on-going wrangling, which was recently described by one insider as being a "public trial by propaganda".The confidential meeting will also possibly decide the fate of RISCOS Ltd.'s sub-licencees, as hinted by STD in their announcement last week. The sub-licencees, who use RISC OS 4 in their products and include STD and VirtualAcorn, received in May, earlier this year, legal letters from Castle regarding the dispute with RISCOS Ltd., according to sources. Later in June, VirtualAcorn and STD announced that they had halted sales of their kit. Castle allege that RISCOS Ltd. are in serious breach of their licence with the owners of RISC OS (now Castle), however RISCOS Ltd., now in its 6th year of trading, has denied these.
Referring to RISCOS Ltd's 2002 annual report, published the same year that the Castle Iyonix was launched, Pace Micro (who had the OS before selling it to Castle in 2003), owned 19.9 percent of the company's shares, APDL's Dave Holden owned 7.77 percent, while Castle owned 5 percent, and the rest is made up of private investors and faces well known to RISC OS users. It's unknown, to us at least, how the current shares ownership stands but Castle recently revealed that they are a "just over 25 percent shareholder in RISC OS Ltd." Another interesting point is a comment made recently by Castle COO Peter Wild: "I would say one of the biggest problems with the shareholders of RISC OS Ltd is actually finding any kind of common opinion among them which is one of the big difficulties in moving anything forward."
Links
RISCOS Ltd. website