About us

• What is RISC OS Open Limited?
• Who are RISC OS Open Limited?
• What is RISC OS?

What is RISC OS Open Limited?

RISC OS Open Limited (ROOL) is a company formed by five people who have been involved in RISC OS projects for many years. ROOL offers professional services to customers wishing to deploy RISC OS commercially and delivers value to its clients by being expert in the design, development and integration of products built around ARM compatible processors. The core team of ROOL’s engineers originally formed the nucleus of Pace’s Cambridge Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) development team and previously worked for Acorn Computers.

The ROOL team is able to help partners and customers to quickly integrate, optimise and deploy efficient RISC OS based solutions in order to take advantage of the market leading MIPS per watt performance from the ARM architecture. ROOL can author software for an existing hardware design or develop a complete hardware and software solution. In addition to its professional services, ROOL is managing the RISC OS source opening activity on behalf of Castle Technology Ltd, as a not-for-profit activity.

ROOL attends various shows for both users new and old to the platform. Photos and updates from shows can be found on our Facebook or Twitter / X feeds. Archive photos from 2011 and earlier can be found on this site, in the old photo galleries.

RISC OS Open Limited is a company registered in England and Wales with company number 05852060. For full contact details, please look here.

Who are RISC OS Open Limited?

The founding company members are, in alphabetical order by first name:

Andrew Hodgkinson

Andrew has over a decade years of experience with RISC OS and ARM based systems including Desktop and embedded products in a wide variety of markets.

Currently a freelance engineer, Andrew first worked at Acorn Computers, Element-14 and Pace Micro Technology, primarily on projects in the DTV market. He has had further roles in the Digital Radio and Mobile Telecoms industries. Andrew became part of RISC OS Open Limited after working with other ROOL founders at Tematic, the software engineering division of Castle Technology Limited.

In addition to extensive embedded ‘C’ skills on Linux and RISC OS, Andrew has many years of Web design experience working with technologies such as (X)HTML, CSS, the DOM, JavaScript, Perl and Ruby. He created the ROOL Web site, a collection of tightly integrated open source applications running on the Ruby On Rails framework. Software releases for RISC OS, Mac OS X and Web applications are available from his web site.

Andrew Moyler

An Executive Director of ROOL, Andy has 22 years of experience within the Telecommunications, Digital TV, I.T. and Consumer Electronics industries. This has included seven years as an Executive Director of three consulting and professional services companies and a further seven years in Business Development, Sales and Marketing within both products and service sectors.

Andy is a Chartered Engineer who has completed a Masters degree in Business Administration specialising in Strategic Management and Corporate Finance. He is a founder and Executive Director of RISC OS Open Ltd, Mediabright, Endurance Technology and Corton Consulting. He has led Management buyout and trade sales.

Ben Avison

Ben Avison is a freelance software engineer operating in the Cambridge area, specialising in digital TV and related technologies. He has been involved in the design of many RISC OS based products, both in the embedded space, including several IPTV set-top boxes and the Bush Internet TV, and in traditional RISC OS workstations, including the Phoebe 2100 and the IYONIX PC.

Ben has worked for companies including Acorn, Element 14, Pace, Tematic, Castle, Broadcom, ANT and Amino. He has extensive knowledge of a number of media architectures and codecs.

Richard Nicoll

Richard has 20 years of experience as an Executive Director in the digital interactive TV, consumer electronics and automated teller machine markets. Richard is experienced at managing and growing R&D teams under changing and challenging circumstances, as well as at developing new business internationally and having responsibility for P&L.

Degree qualified with a BSc in Computing Science and an MBA, Richard is a Founder and Executive Director of Corton Consulting and Endurance Technology. Richard is also a non-executive Director of Strategy & Technology Limited.

Steve Revill

Steve Revill is the Managing Director of ROOL.

My passion is building, leading and transforming technology teams to apply the lessons I and others have learned in a fast-moving field. I believe that a successful technology business must treat itself as the key product and strive for continuous improvement. Key areas I typically oversee include:

• Hiring, engaging, training and retaining the right teams;
• Building a culture of innovation and improvement;
• Ensuring processes are a good fit for the business;
• Maintaining focus on delivering valuable outcomes.

Throughout my career, I have explored a wide variety of business models, technology areas and development methodologies. I have experienced both sides of contract negotiations, as client and supplier and have worked with companies around the world, including ARM, Sky, Pace Micro, Irdeto, Espial and Raspberry Pi.

What is RISC OS?

RISC OS was first released in 1987 by iconic British computer company Acorn Computers and was created by the same team who designed the original Arm microprocessor. The operating system was a proprietary, closed-source product, sometimes licensed to third parties for use in projects as diverse as digital TV decoders, factory automation systems and providing the graphics for ITV’s hit show “Who Wants to be a Millionaire”.

In the early 2000’s, RISC OS was acquired by Castle Technology and subsequently developed for their range of desktop systems. Then in 2006, Castle worked with RISC OS Open to release the source code to RISC OS under a partly-free license. This move allowed anyone to contribute to the RISC OS source code and use it non-commercially free of charge. Commercial users of RISC OS were still required to pay royalties to Castle.

Now, Castle Technology is a wholly-owned subsidiary of RISC OS Developments and RISC OS is being made available under the Apache 2.0 Free Open Source Software license.