STD to re-open from Monday | Drobe.co.uk archives

STD to re-open from Monday

By Chris Williams. Published: 13th Jul 2004, 19:46:18 | Permalink | Printable

Provided everyone plays nice

As a result of events at yesterday's RISCOS Ltd. shareholder meeting, Stuart Tyrrell Developments have issued a statement to say they are re-opening from Monday 19th July. Due to the on-going Castle-RISCOS Ltd. dispute, STD closed their doors earlier this month, explaining that they needed to "reduce existing losses and minimise exposure to new ones".

STD say that their products, namely the Unipod, the STD USB podule, their PS2 mouse converter, the STD 100MBit NIC podule and the A6 series of WindowsXP PCs running RISC OS Adjust with VirtualAcorn, will all be available to order from next week.

Turning up the heat, STD add that their announcement "may be subject to Castle Technology Ltd fulfilling certain obligations in a timely manner." They also describe the A6 as "running RISC OS 4.39, licensed from RISC OS Ltd, under the VirtualRPC-Adjust emulator".

Today's news from STD signifies more than just the fact that STD can begin selling their RISC OS products again; it appears to mean that, as far as STD are concerned, VirtualRiscPC, the controversial yet popular RiscPC emulator for Windows, is shipping again after it was previously halted. STD's announcement also fails to mention the A75 (STD's native ARM7 powered machine, that runs RISC OS Adjust), which we assume is still on hold.

Update at 22:25 13/7/2004
On where the A75 fits in all this, STD's Matt Edgar simply commented to drobe.co.uk, "The A75 is an Advantage Six product for OEM customers, we have been keeping these customers informed throughout." Advantage Six being the side of STD that larger companies outside of the RISC OS arena deal with, so draw your prefered conclusions from this, as necessary.

Matt also declined to comment "at this time" on exactly what obligations Castle are expected to fulfill.

Links

STD website

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Discussion

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Thank goodness for that , great news :-)

Lee on 13/7/04 7:52PM
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Looks like good news.

Reminder to me Get a Unipod ASAP

Revin Kevin on 13/7/04 7:59PM
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I agree - This is very good news.

Let's hope that a permanent fix is being thrashed out that is to the satisfaction of all of the parties involved.

The latest edition of Qercus arrived yesterday and I must confess to morbidly counting through the adverts to see what percentage of those advertising could potentially be taken out by the current dispute. It's pretty much 50%.

I'm most intrigued (but pleased) by this latest development.

martin on 13/7/04 8:31PM
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It's nice to see STD resuming sales. I have one friend who drools whenever he hears about Unipod (the drooling is a real embarrasment), so with any luck the drooling will soon stop and STD will have another sale.

I am a tad concerned, however, by the tone of the section quoted by Chris basically (the announcement "may be subject to Castle Technology Ltd fulfilling certain obligations in a timely manner."). I don't know what committments Castle have made (*if any*) to STD but I am pretty sure that mentioning them outside what is (supposed to be) a private meeting is not exactly, IMHO, the best way to handle things.

I supposed in addition we should not forget the other big winner in this, Microsoft whose esteemed XP product will once again be available to RISC OS users, well I guess it couldn't be all good news then could it ?

Regards

Annraoi

AMS on 13/7/04 8:52PM
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I can think of only 2 scenarios consistent with this news:

1. Castle have climbed down and relicensed ROL, in effect reverting to the status quo ante;

2. Castle have bought out ROL and decided to continue shipping Select/Adjust for the benefit of the AMSs.

I wonder which it will be?

George

bucksboy on 13/7/04 9:33PM
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bucksboy: I don't think STD would have phrased it as 'licensed from RISC OS Ltd' if Castle had bought out ROL. The tone was kicking Castle in the teeth really, so I reckon option 1 is more likely. But in that case, what exactly does Castle have to do? Issue people with letters of appology before STD can sell their stuff? Seems a bit odd.

Anyway, when will we actually know what's going on?

senduran on 13/7/04 9:41PM
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Senduran> That would be anyone's guess.

I am not sure (given Chris's astute observation about the A75) that things are quite as cut and dried as option 1. I believe some compromise was arrived at - and that both sides have backed off a little.

The compromise allows thw ROL/STD/VA/Microsoft camp to gain from the current arrangement, I hope (given the need for the actual survival of the platform) that Castle have also gained from it. Some sort of win-win is probably the least damaging outcome.

AMS on 13/7/04 10:26PM
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But I suppose what we really need is a statement from both ROL and CTL explaining what the status quo is now.

sa110 on 13/7/04 10:59PM
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Wait until everything's set in stone before expecting any kind of statements. The posting from STD was quiite explicit in its meaning: namely the future of RISC OS from STD depends upon what's been agreed being put into action; and we need to allow time for that to happen.

We're almost out of the woods... but not quite yet.

riscdomain on 14/7/04 12:32AM
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I could imagine that they agreed that Castle can cont. selling RISC OS 5, ROL licensing OS versions to VA but that ROL have to stop developing/selling RISC OS embedded. So Castle promised to produce an embedded version of RISC OS for the A75 - but this may take some time?

But that's all just speculation.

maikl on 14/7/04 1:24AM
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maikl:

You obviously have a very vivid imagination, but, unlike lots of others who've posted on this subject, you do say that you're just speculating :-)

apdl on 14/7/04 9:44AM
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To Chris & AMS: The 'astute observation' may have missed the fact that the A75 is an Advantage Six product.

Q on 14/7/04 9:55AM
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...and sorry - I hadn't noticed Chris' additional comment! ;-)

Q on 14/7/04 9:57AM
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Has anyone received a postcard from the STD guys? Did they have a nice time? ;-)

On a more serious note: This is good news. Hopefully everyone can put this behind them and move on.

In terms of unfounded speculation, how's this one: 1. ROL can now sell RISC OS on Virtual RPC for an agreed license fee (this license to be granted by Castle to ROL in a TIMELY MANNER) 2. ROL to stop developing or selling embedded RISC OS 3. Castle to supply (for an agreed license fee) Advantage-6 with an embedded RISC OS for A75 client who want an embedded system (this to be done in a TIMELY MANNER)

So, in true drobe manner, who will be first to step in with a comment of the form "I know far more about this, but I can't tell you for legal (unspecified) reasons"?

Waldorf on 14/7/04 11:42AM
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"So, in true Drobe manner, who will be first to step in with a comment of the form 'I know far more about this, but I can't tell you for legal (unspecified) reasons' "

'PFJ'

piemmm on 14/7/04 11:53AM
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To Waldorf: The correct form is "I can't tell you whether I know or not but, if I did know, I couldn't tell you." And that probably includes all the ROL shareholders! ;-)

Q on 14/7/04 12:17PM
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To bucksboy:

You mentioned two solutions but omitted one:

1. Castle have climbed down and relicensed ROL, in effect reverting to the status quo ante;

2. Castle have bought out ROL and decided to continue shipping Select/Adjust for the benefit of the AMSs.

3. ROL have climbed down and agreed to the conditions of Castle for the licenses and thus now are permitted to license VA-Adjust. And ROL paid the outstanding license fees.

But as already written up to here: This is all speculation - read this as (un)educated guess ... :-o

hzn on 14/7/04 6:34PM
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To Hzn: yes indeed. Actually, "climbed down" was in retrospect an unfortunate choice of phrase: "accepted a compromise in the interests of the platform" might be a better one.

bucksboy on 14/7/04 7:24PM
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In replay to Hzn:

But your second statement does not fit to the STD press release, they say that RISC OS 4.39 was licenced by RISCOS Ltd. and not Castle.

Another aspect: Would be interesting to see whether stand alone versions of VRPC will begin shipping again or whether it will just be possible to buy a bundle.

maikl on 14/7/04 10:26PM
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