Castle and RISC OS Open will tomorrow launch the first stage of their shared source project - by publishing their licence and portions of the RISC OS 5 source code. According to documents seen by drobe.co.uk this evening, the blueprints for a number of components are set to appear on the ROOL website in time for this weekend's Wakefield show. And copies of the licence were tonight uploaded to the CTL website ahead of Saturday's unveiling.The basis of Castle's legal agreement is to allow people to download, modify and redistribute the source code provided it is not sold as part of a hardware product. It must also target ARM-powered architectures, according to the paperwork. Developers contacted by drobe.co.uk tonight feared the wording of the licence was "vague and obnoxious" and that loopholes may be found.
Coders will from tomorrow be able to fetch the blueprints and tools to build the operating system software, and are encouraged to feed any changes they make back to CTL. ROOL are said to be running the project on a not-for-profit basis after announcing their intention to manage the 'shared source code' around a year ago.
A ROOL insider said tonight: "This is a big day in the history of RISC OS. For the first time, ordinary developers and users will not only be able to look at the source code for their favourite OS, but they will be able to add to it in ways that have until now been impossible."
Links
Castle source licence text
RISC OS Open website
Software in first RISC OS 5 source code release