RISC OS Developments announce acquisition of Castle Technology Ltd and RISC OS IPR (don't panic!)

RISC OS Developments is pleased to announce that it has recently completed the acquisition of Castle Technology Ltd and with it the RISC OS Operating System.
This is the result of a unique opportunity that allowed us to bring together various RISC OS companies to achieve something monumental.

Obviously RISC OS Open Ltd have been closely involved in this process, and regular meetings have taken place to plan the next RISC OS projects.

We have also been in discussion with VirtualAcorn/3QD/RISCOS Ltd and we are sure you will be pleased to hear that historical grievances have been put aside, and that a co-operative future is planned.

Existing licence arrangements will remain unchanged, and anyone wishing to use RISC OS on a commercial device should now contact RISC OS Developments for further information.

We urge everyone to attend the London show where we will be unveiling more of our plans for RISC OS’ exciting future.

Whoa. I await further details with bated breath! Hopefully someone records the London Show :)

We have also been in discussion with VirtualAcorn/3QD/RISCOS Ltd and we are sure you will be pleased to hear that historical grievances have been put aside, and that a co-operative future is planned.

Alleluia.

Congratulations to all concerned, not least on this outbreak of common sense.

On a personal note, you can imagine that Richard and I are pretty excited about this and the things we can try to achieve in future :)

If anyone is interested in doing full-time or part-time OS development, please do drop us a line. We’re trying to build up a picture of what’s possible.

Brilliant news – especially the co-operative future. Gives more hope for the future.

Fantastic news and hopefully we’ll get some of the good bits of both OS’s and support applications flowing between the 26 and 32 bit versions.

The London Show should be one of those moments to say “I was there” so if you can get along and support all those who have brought about this and the other exhibitors, then do so.

That’s fantastic news! Congratulations to Andrew & Richard at RISC OS Developments, that’s quite an impressive coup to acquire RISC OS IPR and bring both sides back around the same table to co-operate as well!

Looking forward to hearing their future plans unveiled at the London Show!

Great news. All the best for the future.

I’m stunned.
I’ve checked the date on my phone and PC and the TV and it’s definitely not April 1st.

I think Dave put it best

Congratulations to all concerned, not least on this outbreak of common sense.

Just hoping all the cooperation plans work out.

I’m stunned. I’ve checked the date on my phone and PC and the TV and it’s definitely not April 1st.

You’re not the only one that did a double-take!

Cool.
I like the use of the following words in his statement: monumental, future and opportunity

I look forward to hearing more about this in the coming days and weeks.

Very good news. Congratulations.

like

We have also been in discussion with VirtualAcorn/3QD/RISCOS Ltd and we are sure you will be pleased to hear that historical grievances have been put aside, and that a co-operative future is planned.

Wonderful. Now I presume the OS versions will progressively be merged together. The very top priorities due to their self contained nature should probably be:
- merging the toolbox modules
- adding to OS 5 the graphic rendering and conversion modules

Next things I’d like to see from the Select variant would be:
- text selection & clipboard handling in icons
- better handling of errors in background processes, i.e. avoid killing the current wimp task for errors occurring in callbacks or interrupts.

I foresaw this months ago. It just felt like the time was right to put the past in the past and move on…

https://www.heyrick.co.uk/blog/index.php?diary=20180401

Forgive my memory. RISC OS Developments are R-Comp, Orpheus and…

Fred – RISC OS Developments are RISC OS Developments ;)

Management is Andrew from R-Comp and Richard from Orpheus, but we go to some lengths to try not to muddy things with our “other lives”. Plus a range of investors, large and small, from all over the RISC OS community.

This particular project has been achieved through additional investment, though, rather than impacting significantly on investor funds, as we were conscious that we didn’t want to jeapordise funding for our other projects.

Of course, we still need further investment, as there are lots of projects we wish to tackle (there were at least half a dozen more added to the list at the last ROOL meetup)! This was an opportunity that presented itself, and we moved heaven and earth (well, not quite) to try and make it happen.

Worth mentioning that Richard and I are unpaid – kinda like the ROOL guys, I guess. It’s our way of giving back to RISC OS :)

Ah, OK. I remembered the announcement of it’s formation but lost the detail.

Here’s wishing the best for future endeavours.

We’re trying to build up a picture of what’s possible.

If you have, or will plan to have, access to the 26 bit sources from the other side of the fence, please consider dropping some of that stuff into the open repo as “26bitstuff”. I’m sure there are people here who would be willing to pick a pet project with the aim of making it play well with the current builds of the OS – 32 bit, ARMv7/8 safe, etc etc.

Enough time has passed, and enough divergence has happened that you may need to ask for some community effort. Consider, for example, the Wimp. Let’s pick a topic – rounded icons <smirk>. There are going to be significant differences in the Wimp source that the only viable answer is to surgically extract code from one and paste it into the other. “At the end of the day” what we all would like is a better more capable OS, so don’t hesitate to ask.

Just to set peoples’ hopes to a realistic level, there’s a long road wrt to relations with RISCOS Ltd / Castle. Don’t expect miracles out of the gate. There’s an awful lot of trust that needs to be rebuilt.

It’s great to see such an overwhelmingly positive reaction to this news. It’s the first steps to a brighter future for RISC OS.

yayyy great news! …and ‘outbreak of common sense’ never hurts :)

As you can probably guess, RISC OS Developments are giving one of the talks in the London Show theatre.

Don’t be late, you wouldn’t want to miss it! Show opens at 11am on Saturday 27th October.

Fantastic news and congratulations to Andrew & Richard at RISC OS Developments for making it all happen. Looking forward to hearing more details at the London Show.

I would like to thank Castle Technology retrospectively for all the work they put in to RISC OS and the Iyonix, and particularly John Ballance for all his interaction with users.

It’s now a new situation. I obviously hope that the new IP ownership goes well and that the rapprochement between parties succeeds – but I have reservations about rounded icons and green directories (fluff!) as noted by Rick in his April address – not a priority of mine!