RISC OS 5 source code release revealed - RISC OS News, Software and Information

RISC OS 5 source code release revealed

Published: 29th Sep 2006, 21:55:39GMT Source: drobe.co.uk
By the Drobe news desk

Page 1 of 1

[Updated] Reaction and views from across the platform

Castle and RISC OS Open Ltd have revealed their ambitious plan to release the source code of various RISC OS 5 components. Under a so-called 'shared source initiative', a phased release of RISC OS is promised to take place over the next few months - starting with applications including Paint, Edit, Draw, Configure, Unicode, the web browser Browse, and the printer manager. The Shared C Library and RISC OS build scripts will also be released, according to CTL and ROS Open.

It is hoped the project will kick start outside development of the desktop operating system, which has somewhat died down over recent years. It is also hoped the various hurdles that minority closed source operating systems face - such as modern driver development - will be more easily tackled with extra developers working on the source code.

But independent programmers have so far viewed the announcement with mixed opinions. While some say it is hard to judge the impact of this new initiative without seeing a formal license, others have warmly welcomed the news and pledged to take up development.

Main points
- The RISC OS source code - the blueprints to its design - will be made available, and can be updated and re-released by third party developers.

- The source code will still belong to Castle. A formal 'shared source' license will be published "in due course".

- Applications can include RISC OS modules provided developers publish the modules' source code.

- RISC OS Open hope to "promote more rapid development of the software base", and say support and encouragement will speed up the roll out of code.

- They will set up a system to accept updates and changes from coders.

- As exclusively revealed earlier this year on drobe.co.uk, RISC OS Open are staffed by ex-Acorn, ex-Pace Micro, ex-Element-14, and ex-Tematic engineers and managers.

- Over a million deployed consumer electronics products are RISC OS powered according to Castle and RISC OS Open.

RISC OS Open have stressed that the license will not be a traditional open source agreement. Instead a dual-license will be employed allowing people to view the software blueprints, make modifications, and distribute updated components provided the updated source code is handed out too. To use the RISC OS source code commercially, you must pay a royalty fee.

There is no requirement to pass source code changes back to RISC OS Open, and while the company will act as gatekeepers to the official source code, this will be performed on a not-for-profit basis. Punters will be able to donate cash to the project.

In a statement, RISC OS Open company secretary Steve Revill said: "It's the first time that the public have been able to access these components at a source level. We believe that it's an exciting opportunity for developers to submit their improvements for all to use.

"With the help and support of the RISC OS community, I am sure that there will be even more to follow. It is our sincere hope that this will stimulate the growth of our community and introduce a new era of development."

Castle boss Jack Lillingston said: "In today's era of fast moving technological developments, both users and developers should have worldwide and easy access to an operating system. For too long RISC OS has been regarded as a closed proprietary OS and this has hampered wide scale take-up.

"We are delighted to be supporting the creation of an international RISC OS community with the team at ROOL. Their activities will further the use of RISC OS in a structured way, promoting the take-up of RISC OS."

Reactions
RISCOS Ltd boss Paul Middleton said: "We are too busy finishing off the first Select 4 issue to comment much on the matter.

"It is probably worth pointing out that the 'open sourcing' of RISC OS is going to solely cover RISC OS 5 versions. We do not intend to 'open source' RISC OS 4 versions as some people seem to have assumed.

"I would point out though that we have always been happy to work with developers who require source level access to RISC OS, in the same way that Acorn made sources available for particular projects. The difference between us and ROOL is that we do require any changes made to be fed back to us, as we only want one version of RISC OS 4 to be available."

Aemulor and Geminus developer Adrian Lees said: "I'd want to know if there's no 'contamination' clause so that I could still go ahead and re-implement an OS component later after seeing source code, if I so chose. Of course, I want to know what will be open sourced; I'm especially interested in lower-level software - the Kernel and Window Manager.

"It'd be nice if this and new hardware development from Castle fitted together. If CTL does make a new motherboard, I'd happily contribute to the OS changes needed to get it running.

"Also, supposing I plus someone else wanted to port RISC OS to different hardware, bought in or custom, I want to know what the license fee per unit is likely to be, ie. how much we'd have to add to the hardware price as a minimum to cover costs. is there a clause about the target platforms, especially emulation on non-ARM CPUs?"

CDVDBurn author Steffen Huber said: "I really welcome this move. To me, it is the first positive piece of news for our market since the launch of the Iyonix. It is probably the only way to keep RISC OS alive, and it has the potential to interest many ex-RISC OS developers.

"It is of course too early to consider all consequences - what exactly is that 'per unit royalty fee', would this 'shared licence' allow royalty free shipping of a freeware emulator complete with RISC OS, does selling support for an otherwise free product make it a commercial product. The coming discussions will keep us surely busy for a while."

Artworks and Techwriter developer Martin Wuerthner said: "I am delighted to see progress in this direction. I was about to ask Castle for the source code of some OS components because I wanted to release improved versions, so this move is very welcome."

GCCSDK developer and Firefox porter Peter Naulls said: "Some of the choices are a bit strange - Browse for example. Do we really need to resurrect that, with respect to the considerable effort that Acorn developers did put into it? On the other hand, the core apps - Paint et al - and I suspect I won't be the last to say this, have more than a passing resemblance to those which had considerable improvements by RISCOS Ltd for Select and Adjust. This might be another nail in the ROL coffin.

"I remain cautious about this, until I see precisely what's available and of course what the precise conditions of the licenses are, and bearing in mind that much of RISC OS continues to need is application development, not OS-level improvements per se, and the distraction that this might bring. On the other hand, it will no doubt revitalise some developers."

R-Comp boss Andrew Rawnsley was more reserved. He said: "It seems fairly reminiscent of RISCOS Ltd open sourcing parts of Printers, ie. not hugely exciting. I guess if people are interested in developing those components, it is good, but really, you have to ask, shouldn't Castle actually have paid coders working on these things, especially given the open-but-not licence?

"Unfortunately, most of the items listed have better versions already in existence as part of Adjust, so really all it does is accentuate the OS split, because the public only have source access to 'out-dated' versions of things."

Rob Kendrick, NetSurf GTK developer and drobe.co.uk contributor, said: "I assume CTL are hoping or praying that suddenly thousands of companies will start using RISC OS and give them royalties. From what they're suggesting, it really is Open Source, just with a no-commercial-use clause in one of the two licences the source is available under.

"The only people who use 'shared source' are people who hate 'open source' - ie, Microsoft. The two are essentially the same."

NetSurf developer John-Mark Bell said he would reserve judgement until he has seen the exact 'shared source' license.

Michael Drake, NetSurf designer and contributor, said: "This sounds good. My view is that anything like this is better than nothing. RISC OS was going nowhere. And the RISC OS Open website is a RISC OS site that doesn't look vile."

Currently, no fixed release timetable is known, and the exact license conditions have yet to be published. RISC OS Open first popped onto the radar in June, prompting questions of what would opening up the OS achieve - Castle later dropped hints at its plans to release the blueprints. RISCOS Ltd's Paul Middleton argued earlier this month that Castle's wish to reveal the OS source code would have no effect on ROL, and that this "is not the panacea for suddenly taking RISC OS forward. No operating system can be developed solely for free."

• Earlier today Jack declined to comment further on how Castle may use the new IOP XScale cores. He said: "You know us - no comments about future products."

Links
RISC OS Open website - FAQs, the lot
Announcement PDF - drawn up in Microsoft Word

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adh1003 (+1.0) 29/9/06 9:58PM	Been checking the RISC OS Open site, but not seen any changes? Clear your browser cache! Reload: http://www.riscosopen.org/
markee174 (+2.0) 29/9/06 10:13PM	Perhaps ROOL might be get a theatre slot or stand at the SE show as I am sure there will be lots of questions....
bluenose (+2.0) 29/9/06 10:26PM	Hopefully this will kick start a few things and result in a few updates for use end users. SE Show should be intresting just for this, even if ROOL are not there I'm sure castle will be able to talk about it. Also what does this mean for ROL's Select for iyonix as to me this cuts yet another excuse away as they can now have access to the source code to make the kernal changes?
fantasian (+2.0) 29/9/06 10:28PM	This will be my first Drobe comment ever; I got really excited by what must be the best news for a while : fast new hardware and open sourced OS. Excellent!
sa110 29/9/06 10:29PM	So now we are going to have RO5, ROAdjust and ROxx with various bits of the OS open sourced. How much sense does this make?
sa110 (+4.2) 29/9/06 10:34PM	okay, re-reading the article, it would appear my earlier comment may have been a bit rushed. Allowing the devlopment of various OS based applications and Browse is a good thing. However when it gets to updating the OS itself, I standby my earlier comment.
adh1003 (+3.0) 29/9/06 10:37PM	I ought to just reiterate that this isn't technically open source, although the source code is out in the open for the public to use. The strict definition of open source doesn't allow dual licences, whereas what we're doing at ROOL does - commercial users have to pay a royalty. That's why we're using the term "shared source" on the web site.
bluenose (+2.0) 29/9/06 10:38PM	In Reply to sa110 Well then again perhaps we could have on joint RISC OS if someone merged the ROAdjust and RO5 that run on both the Iyonix & A9 not to mention any new hardware. Who knows ROL might do that work. Still I'm getting a little carried away and at the moment only some sources are being shared sourced but as "fantasian" said this is an exciting development .
GavinWraith (+2.0) 29/9/06 11:16PM	This is good news. I look forward to seeing the sources to be made available and to experimenting with them. I also look forward to seeing what others will do with them.
davidb (+1.0) 29/9/06 11:39PM	adh1003 wrote: "The strict definition of open source doesn't allow dual licences..." Where is the strict definition of open source that says that?
flibble (+2.0) 29/9/06 11:53PM	*In reply to adh1003:* The point about this not being 'Open Source' is made on ROOL's website. I was rather argumentative in a previous discussion about a proposed license, having objected to it being called Open Source. I'm glad that ROOL have made it nice and obvious on their website.
7thsoftware (+1.0) 29/9/06 11:54PM	Look at the OSI web site http://www.opensource.org - there is a link to a definition of Open Source over on the left. You should also read the FAQ on the http://www.riscosopen.org site.
guestx (+1.0) 30/9/06 12:35AM	I guess the strict definition of open source is about, well, open source. However, the dual licensing thing just adds another dimension - it doesn't take an existing dimension away. That something is available under a closed source licence doesn't mean that the same thing, licensed under an open source licence, is suddenly not open source for all those people who have received the software under the terms of such a licence. Indeed, commercial agreements often run in parallel to the availability of software as open source and do not compromise that in any way, and I'd be surprised to see any open source definition expanded to cover what is effectively a business strategy. Anyway, the "shared source" licensing of RISC OS "Open" seems like an odd combination of GPL-like distribution terms with a commercial exploitation restriction. It'll be interesting to see what effect that restriction has, and whether the GPL won't ultimately prove to be a better choice.
flypig (+4.0) 30/9/06 2:32AM	This news has really made my day. The licence may not be truly open source, and all of the details may not be available yet, but what does seem clear is that the source code for many of the RISC OS components will be available for everyone to access for the first time. It'll be great to have the opportunity to look at and change the underlying functionality of the OS. This opens up a host of possibilities You look at many of the suggestions people made under the Merlin scheme or have made on the Iyonix list, and whereas before people had to speculate as to how things might work, it will hopefully now be possible for people just to go out and try things.
adrianl (+1.0) 30/9/06 3:28AM	"Anyway, the "shared source" licensing of RISC OS "Open" seems like an odd combination of GPL-like distribution terms with a commercial exploitation restriction. It'll be interesting to see what effect that restriction has, and whether the GPL won't ultimately prove to be a better choice. " I'd argue that since GPL in /practice/ if not in letter prevents the code being used in commercial products, that the proposed dual-licensing arrangement (at least as currently outlined) is actually more flexible.
markee174 (+1.0) 30/9/06 8:31AM	*In reply to adrianl:* Why not release it under GPL and also an alterative license as MySQL does?
tank (+1.0) 30/9/06 8:37AM	Would this not mean ROL could release the same components (as they tried with !Printers) and the bug fixes/improvements could be itegrated into a combined source ?
Jaffa 30/9/06 8:39AM	*In reply to markee174:* "Why not release it under GPL and also an alternative license as MySQL does?" Because obviously they don't think they can sell services & support, or provide enough value-add on top of a truly open source product. And in the commercial market that Castle's aiming at (embedded devices) the GPL - and other open source licences - have been very succesful. In those markets, the OS without the hardware is generally useless; but many commercial, embedded, hardware products use GPL software with no disadvantages (and sometimes advantages). Think of all those routers running Busybox, a Linux kernel etc. etc. Personally, I'd've thought that an STB maker would want support for their OS, and so value-add services on top of an open source product would be viable. But presumably only if the customer trusts the supplier to be able to supply those services in a timely and efficient manner. Anyway, I'll stick my 2p in too: it'll be interesting to see how much of a running system can be replaced. There's no mention of the kernel, or most of the core of the OS; so I'd imagine we're most likely to see developers picking up things like !Paint to improve them.
markee174 30/9/06 8:44AM	*In reply to Jaffa:* Haven't you just argued in favour of releasing the code under both a GPL and a non-GPL license? The GPL version encourages people to look at it and investigate the source code. The serious customers will want the non-GPL version and support - the GPL version just provides a better way to reach them.
mripley (+8.2) 30/9/06 12:17PM	What about the improvements already made but are part of RO4 Select/Adjust ? Unless the same modules and apps are open sourced from there as well then somebody will simply duplicate the work that has already been done. I'm all for open sourcing but I see some serious pitfalls due to the split OS fork. I am also a bit suspicious that this is an attempt by Castle to drop development itself for those modules and apps that it knows are inferior to the ones in Select. Has anyone checked this ?
bric2 (+4.0) 30/9/06 12:38PM	This is the best news we have had on the future of our moribumd OS for a very long time and prompts this, my first comment to Drobe. I am greatly encouraged by the positive reactions of Developers and others whose achievements and abilities I greatly respect, even though there is a lot of water to flow under the bridge before we know what the outcomes will really be.
Walks (+9.2) 30/9/06 12:43PM	Yes, this is what I am worried about. Given that alot of effort has been put into improving Paint etc, as part of Select/Adjust it seems a waste for this to be duplicated. My other concern is about what people can actually get and what people will still need to pay for. Will it be possible to get hold of the full OS, or would you still need to buy this? I can't see people being that keen to develop the OS if it is the latter.
fwibbler (+3.0) 30/9/06 2:55PM	Not that I want to p*** in the pool, especially on top of this latest shot of chlorine, but didn't Castle get a bit miffed a while back when RISCOS Ltd Open sourced Printers? Apart from that, it will be interesting to see what effect this has on RISC OS. I wonder what RISCOS Ltd think about it? Cheers!
Jaffa (+1.0) 30/9/06 2:55PM	*In reply to markee174:* "Haven't you just argued in favour of releasing the code under both a GPL and a non-GPL license?" Not necessarily. Selling services around a wholly GPL product is perfectly possible. Dual licencing may make more sense if you want to value-add software, but you need copyright assignment. "The GPL version encourages people to look at it and investigate the source code. The serious customers will want the non-GPL version and support - the GPL version just provides a better way to reach them." Except the GPL doesn't allow you to distinguish based on usage, so commercial customers who don't want support can use it without paying a royalty.
guestx 30/9/06 3:04PM	*In reply to adrianl:* "I'd argue that since GPL in /practice/ if not in letter prevents the code being used in commercial products" I guess all those Linux-based devices are purely imaginary, then.
druck (+1.0) 30/9/06 3:32PM	This could be very good news for RISC OS in general. There are certainly short term opportunities this will bring to ensure new APIs are available on all platforms, and I hope that over the long term with the continuing enthusiasm (or is it now masochism ) of RISC OS developers, to produce significant new functionality for the OS. For example in the short term the unicode font manager can be made available for all platforms, bring the benefits of NetSurfs support for foreign character sets to all, and making life easier for its developers. If the print manager also contains the drivers, it will be possible to patch the missing support for unicode text printing in RISC OS 5 at the same time making it available for 4.x. One thing ROL doesn't appreciate is that by not making APIs universally available, developers will be reluctant to use them, and without programs either requiring people to upgrade, or at the last tempting people with the promise of additional functionality if they do, then there just isn't a good case for buying an OS upgrade. ROL now has the ideal opportunity to licence some already written code and get out a release to Select customers, however I suspect the reluctance they have shown in the past to paying licence fees will mean that miss this boat too. However, the good news for users is that if ROL don't commercially exploit it, other developers can still make it available under the shared source licence, and any improvements can be returned to ROOL for the benefit of everyone.
adrianl (+2.0) 30/9/06 3:35PM	"I guess all those Linux-based devices are purely imaginary, then." I was thinking of products that are purely software. It's a little more difficult to copy and distribute hardware.
hzn (+4.2) 30/9/06 4:05PM	To Peter Naulls: "Some of the choices are a bit strange - Browse for example." Browse is a good idea since it is still my favourite Browser for offline use and even for quit a bit online use if I surf using RISC OS. Getting a 32 bit version would be nice indeed. *In reply to druck:* I like your comment about ROL So let us hope that this attracts the odd developer to add features to RISC OS 5 now ... or perhaps ROL now gets to know how to offer Select for the IYONIX
guestx (+1.0) 30/9/06 5:24PM	*In reply to adrianl:* "I was thinking of products that are purely software." Well, it's possible to sell GPL-licensed code, of course, as well as to provide paid support and services for such code whether obtained for free or otherwise. And there are real people out there who seem to have made such business models work. Meanwhile... *In reply to druck:* "ROL now has the ideal opportunity to licence some already written code and get out a release to Select customers, however I suspect the reluctance they have shown in the past to paying licence fees will mean that miss this boat too." The problem with this scheme is that companies like RISCOS Ltd. will see that they're automatically lower in the hierarchy than Castle, and since they'll want to keep the end product closed source, they may well avoid developing anything that passes revenues upwards in that hierarchy. Even if they want to sell stuff whilst giving away the source, they still have to pay Castle something.
mripley (+4.2) 30/9/06 5:45PM	Browse is an excellent application to get working again (my copy crashes and effectively kills my machine). This is surely the browser that is closest to what we require of a modern browser. Netsurf is excellent however it does lack Javascript which Browse has. Another advantage of developing Browse is that there is nothing "owned" by ROLltd to conflict with any development work. It would also plug one of the biggest holes in RISCOS's lack of appeal to the outside world.
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