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RISC OS News Article
United at long last
Published: 15th Jul 2004, 18:30:34GMT  Source: drobe.co.uk
By Chris Williams
Page 1 of 1
No hard feelings, ok?
Newer RISC OS cogsIn an historic announcement, issued jointly this evening by RISCOS Ltd., Castle, Advantage 6, MicroDigital and VirtualAcorn, it would very much appear that the past on-going disputes surrounding RISC OS have been settled. Take a deep breath, then wait for this.

The aforementioned developers have decided on a "new initiative", following talks chaired by Icon's Mike Glover, that were held on Wednesday earlier this week. This undertaking is hoped to "ensure that the RISC OS hardware and software developers can continue with the development and sales of their respective products."

Today's statement also carried further news that will appeal to many users: "relevant" RISC OS Select features will be available to Iyonix users via the Merlin project, as RISCOS Ltd. and Castle announced that from now on they'll be working together. Castle's engineering arm, Tematic, will focus on "core operating system technologies", and also work with RISCOS Ltd. to ensure "future development of key features of the RISC OS desktop environment".

Yesterday morning, RISCOS Ltd. shareholders were informed that today's news should signal "a major new era of co-operation along the lines first suggested at the RISCOS Ltd AGM last year".

When the dispute between Castle, RISCOS Ltd. and the other developers spilled into the public eye, users felt the market plunging into uncertainty. It now appears that this week has been a week of some much needed discussion, whereby finally a common ground was found.

Hopefully now, there will be further developments waiting for us, the end users of desktop RISC OS, towards the end of the year, in time for the two Autumn RISC OS shows.

Links
RISCOS Ltd. website
Castle website
The joint press release

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This article has been linked to, or is available in the following formats:  
 
 
 
 
 
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hzn(valued user) 
15/7/04 6:38PM
Sounds good ... especially the Merlin part.
Revin Kevin(valued user) 
Face
15/7/04 6:38PM
About time. Someone must have banged a few heades together. Well done to that man or woman.
jlavallin(bad user / troll) 
15/7/04 6:40PM
About time...............
Now this OS can start going forward in Leaps and Bounds :)
hzn(valued user) (+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 
Face
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(valued user) (+1.6)
Face
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(valued user) (+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(good user) 
15/7/04 8:26PM
Looks like a few people might now be renewing their select subscriptions....
knutson(good user) (+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(valued user) 
Face
15/7/04 9:19PM
Glad we got that sorted out ;)
markee174(good user) (+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(valued user) 
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 
Face
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(good user) 
Face
16/7/04 9:46AM
Brilliant.
quatermass 
Face
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(valued user) (+1.6)
Face
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)
Face
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(good user) 
Face
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(good user) (+1.6)
Face
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 
Face
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(valued user) 
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(valued user) (+1.6)
Face
16/7/04 1:38PM
Lets see how long this all lasts for.
blahsnr(good user)www 
16/7/04 1:42PM
piemmm
Indeed.
ninja(valued user) (+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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