hzn 15/7/04 6:38PM |
Sounds good ... especially the Merlin part. |
Revin Kevin
 15/7/04 6:38PM |
About time. Someone must have banged a few heades together. Well done to that man or woman. |
jlavallin 15/7/04 6:40PM |
About time...............
Now this OS can start going forward in Leaps and Bounds  |
hzn (+2.6) 15/7/04 6:41PM |
German translation at http://riscos.gag.de/lizenz.html.
Deutsche Übersetzung unter http://riscos.gag.de/lizenz.html. |
DaveW
 15/7/04 6:50PM |
As a professional user of RISC OS I am delighted that I can have VRPC on my laptop and a developing RISC OS on my desktop (Iyonix) all seamlessly connected on a network. Apart from MS Excel which is brilliant, my needs are well catered for by a great operating system. Thanks to everyone involved! |
martin (+1.6)
 15/7/04 7:49PM |
A second chance for everyone.
Excellent.
Let's hope that everyone is now 100% committed to making what has been agreed, work, and to expanding the RISC OS market on several fronts.
When all five companies are filthy rich in a few year's time perhaps they'll be able to laugh about this little scrap.
At any rate, I'm sure everyone is emerging with a clearer idea of where they are going and what has to be done to get there. It may yet all turn out for the best. |
ninja (+1.6) 15/7/04 7:51PM |
I expect that a lot of the questions we had over the past month won't now be answered, but with everyone getting along again now they're mostly irrelevant or at least uninteresting.
The meat of this agreement wouldn't normally be a big deal - companies with similar aims working together, wow! But what it represents is a clearing of the air, which the past few weeks have shown was sorely needed. Oh, and in the more immediate term, the restarting of a number of companies' incomes
It's been a long month, but after which I've actually got more interest in RISC OS than I did before. |
markee174 15/7/04 8:26PM |
Looks like a few people might now be renewing their select subscriptions....
|
knutson (+1.6) 15/7/04 9:12PM |
Not only is this news good for RISC OS development but look at who managed to get in the same room without any bloodshed  |
druck
 15/7/04 9:19PM |
Glad we got that sorted out |
markee174 (+1.6) 15/7/04 9:36PM |
And the winner is .....the RISC OS market. |
andyturton 15/7/04 9:53PM |
Excellent news. Crikey, I thought the end of the World had arrived.
Now, let's get some really innovative and appealing software on this platform again. We have the hardware.
We really need to convince the punters around the world that there is a serious alternative to Whinedoze. If the LINUX bods can do it, so can we. |
VirtualAcorn (+1.6) 16/7/04 1:51AM |
There is a great deal of potential here. With the will and determination those involved should end up with an amicable solution that allows developers that use RISC OS as a core part of their products to flourish in an expanding market. A great deal of progress has been made, lets all make sure that progress continues.
Everyone can help in their own way by supporting RISC OS as a whole. I want to see an end to the "partisan" politics that has infected our platform over the last couple of years. If those in the RISC OS community want to have an arguement then fine, but instead of holding an arguement amongst ourselves, lets construct a positive and logical arguement we can use with those who are currently outside RISC OS to pursuade them to come in and join us all.
A couple of years ago it would be difficult to imagine that ROL and VirtualAcorn would be working together, but now we are. A few weeks ago it might well have seemed that RISC OS was in deadlock, yet today everyone has seen a press release jointly issued by all those directly involved.
Instead of building on the negativity of the past, lets all build on the positivity of the future. |
hzn 16/7/04 6:50AM |
To VirtualAcorn:
I like your comment and especially the last sentence.
Often you get replies to requests like "This and that won't work since ... " Perhaps we should move to answering requests with a "This and that will work, if ..." You can pretty much make the same statement both ways but the latter wording sounds nicer and a lot more positive... and leaves the option open to address the if's and then get this and that working ... and the initial reply is still true! |
JGZimmerle
 16/7/04 9:08AM |
So will both OS versions be merged, or what? |
senduran (+1.6) 16/7/04 9:32AM |
In reply to JGZimmerle:
'what'. According to the press release, 'RISCOS Ltd will be working with Castle to
provide relevant features of the Select scheme to IYONIX pc users through the Merlin project'. That isn't a merger. There will still be a split by the sounds of it, but it will hopefully mean less than it ever did. |
jonix
 16/7/04 9:46AM |
Brilliant. |
quatermass
 16/7/04 9:49AM |
Hmmm.
Let's wait a few months to see what 'relevant' bits of Select actually make it into the next release of RISC OS 5?
Hopefully this new glue will remain 'set'?
|
flypig (+1.6)
 16/7/04 10:29AM |
Ironically this deal might never have happened if the whole issue hadn't been made quite so public. So those people who claimed at the beginning that RISC OS could end up stronger as a result may well have been right. I hope so.
Whatever the reason, it's good news and "well done" to all involved! |
JGZimmerle (+1.6)
 16/7/04 10:38AM |
I was just wondering, what will happen now from a technology POV. Will ROL develop UI related things in both versions and Tematic core modules in both versions (probably leading to a merged OS at some point)? Or will ROL continue to develop Select/Adjust by themselves plus the UI related parts of OS5? Will both companies exchange their sources, to make their versions compatible? |
zito 16/7/04 10:50AM |
I well I truly hope for a merged OS, though compatibility is next best thing I suppose. With a market as small as ours I would think divergence and duplication of effort is a bad thing, maybe now there is a concensus on how to move forward in a single direction. |
wuerthne
 16/7/04 11:02AM |
In reply to zito:
A merged OS is probably a red herring: It would cause an incredible amount of work for little benefit. Different Acorn hardware platforms have always had different versions of the OS and this has not been a problem in the past.
Compatibility is very important point though. However, even in the past years, there have not been any serious threats to compatibility, so this can only improve now.
Martin |
wuerthne (+1.6)
 16/7/04 11:06AM |
In reply to JGZimmerle:
"Will both companies exchange their sources, to make their versions compatible?"
I cannot see why this would be necessary and I am pretty certain this will not happen. You do not need to exchange any sources to ensure compatibility, you just need to agree on the interfaces. Besides, there is no need to "make their versions compatible". There have not been any major compatibility problems so far. The only problem I recall is the diverged version numbering of the ToolBox modules. |
JGZimmerle
 16/7/04 11:11AM |
I know it is not necessary to exchange sources, but it would make things easier, wouldn't it? And since both companies have improved theit OSs in different areas, both could profit from a source exchange. |
tootled 16/7/04 11:21AM |
Funny how the Windoze box I'm viewing this article on, suddenly went bobbins with the pointer jumping all over & off the screen, had to reboot...
This is the kind of development our platform needs at the moment, esp. after all the recent arguments going on between CTL & ROL, casting a worrying shadow over the platform and forcing STD to pull out temporarily.
-A concerted effort from all parties to develop the platform in unison, bringing together all their collective skills, can only be a good thing. |
hzn 16/7/04 11:33AM |
In reply to JGZimmerle and to wuerthne:
I don't think exchanging sources will help much. True, they were developed from the same base, but I think that the changes made in the kernel area were pretty different due to 32bitting one, due to different hardware platforms and due to different intentions. Thus I'd expect the source trees to be pretty different by now so that it would be hard to take changes from one side over to the other one.
I rather expect that we'll have two base OSses for some time, the 26 bit RISC OS 4 thread and the 32 bit RISC OS 5 one. The things sitting on top of the base OS - be it Select features or Merlin - will probably (hopefully) become pretty much the same as time comes by, as will surely the OS interfaces, Toolbox, ... Having a modular OS makes these things feasible, I'd say.
|
piemmm (+1.6)
 16/7/04 1:38PM |
Lets see how long this all lasts for. |
blahsnr 16/7/04 1:42PM |
piemmm
Indeed. |
ninja (+1.1) 16/7/04 2:24PM |
So long as both companies work together and share APIs this is very good news. Getting higher level features of Select on Iyonix would be very nice, but slightly less essential. |
maikl (+1.6) 16/7/04 5:14PM |
I hope that we will end up with two version of RISC OS that look the same to the user and that provides the same possibitities to programmers as e.g. the image file renderer. At the moment this is not used by many programs because only Select supports it.
I wonder whether Iyonix owners will have to get a Select subscription or whether all the features will be just part of a Iyonix system upgrade. But I guess time will tell. |
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