RISC OS is open for business!

We’ve been down this road before. The problem is, some of the important parts of the DDE aren’t theirs to decide what to do with. It’s not just a matter of using it as a source of income, it’s also a matter of having the right to release the source…

Is there a thread talking about who owns what in the DDE? I’ve just had a rummage and can’t find anything.

;) Perhaps its time to get hold of the GCC SDK from here and have a go…

Alternatively the DDE is available with a selection of applications from here or here . There’s also the old Acorn version available from here

AFAIK one can’t compile the whole OS with the GCC toolchain? And as mentioned above, £50 is quite a barrier to having a dabble. Dabble != reworking all the source to compile with GCC :D

I remember a previous discussion about trying to set up a bounty so that the DDE could be made free (but not open source) but I don’t think it went anywhere :(

By the way, if anyone spots anything in the media picking up on this announcement, please post here so we can all enjoy!

As of about twenty minutes ago, it’s on El Reg.

Also, when I put something on RISCOSitory last night, as I usually do, I tweeted it. That tweet currently has 37 likes and 25 direct retweets, as well as (counts) 9 quote-tweets. (A record for a tweet in my feed by a huge margin).

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/10/23/risc_os_open_source/ – argh, Vince beat me to it!

http://www.osnews.com/story/30817/RISC_OS_goes_open_source_with_Apache_2_0_license

https://www.iconbar.com/comments/rss/news1447.html

https://www.riscository.com/2018/risc-os-goes-fully-open-source/

If it is the case that the tool-chain needed to compile the OS is to remain closed-source then that’s not good. Since RISC OS Open are presumably passing licensing fees to them I’m guessing the right holders are known and can be named?

If they really can’t open-source the tool-chain for actual legal reasons then at least switch it from closed-source 50 quid to closed-source no cost (this requires no change of licensing – so there is no excuse here). Then there is a chance of porting the OS away from the closed tool-chain to a modern open-source compiler.

“it’s also a matter of having the right to release the source…” – problem solved right? It wouldn’t be the best result, but at least it would be a result.

Having a restrictively-licensed toolchain could also be a problem if someone wanted to set up a continuous integration system or build farm for OS builds, depending on how it would be deployed. Is the license (or licenses) for the DDE available to read anywhere online?

:D

I’ve just glanced at csa, and I’m surprised there is absolutely no comment about this. Obviously, a factor is that nothing has been posted to .announce (or perhaps has been, but Andrew C has yet to approve it?) – but even without, I’m surprised nobody has mentioned it independently in .misc

Perhaps that’s a true reflection of the amount of cross-over (in our little bubble at least) between people who read usenet and people who look on the web.

There’s a thread re RODev acquiring Castle, because Andrew R posted something to .announce – but the last post in that appears to be 21st; the day before this news was published. I’ll read through the thread later, and if nobody beats me to it (or something doesn’t appear separately) find an appropriate post to follow-up with a reference to the licence change.

There will be a longer press release to the RISC OS news sources in the next 24 hours. ROOL were keen to make sure the rest of the world had early sight of the news in case they wanted to come to the London show to ask questions. Remember that our focus has always been the London show.

As for toolchain, it has been discussed, but unfortunately it’s a ROOL product, and they’ll need to explain the (multiple) difficulties with that.

Having a restrictively-licensed toolchain could also be a problem if someone wanted to set up a continuous integration system or build farm for OS builds, depending on how it would be deployed. Is the license (or licenses) for the DDE available to read anywhere online?

This post sort of covers it: https://www.riscosopen.org/forum/forums/3/topics/394#posts-3647

Maybe publicity around this news will get the copyright holders of parts of the toolchain to reconsider relicensing their work, especially if that work hasn’t seen much attention since the 1990s, as mentioned in that thread.

Well, if Castle license it from ARM then at the very least they can decide to make it FOC. Without knowing the details, opening it sounds like it would require asking Codemist (who ceased trading last year) to open source their code, and I’m guessing ARM to open up theirs. I think ARM are fairly good these days on the open source front…

Anyway, this all may be moot depending on what is announced at the weekend!

Two not from our immediate circle.

http://www.teknoids.com/2018/10/22/risc-os-is-being-relicensed-under-the-apache-license/

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18277111

Even managed to get on Reddit :-O

https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/9qhdn6/risc_os_open_news_risc_os_is_open_for_business/

How about the coverage on V3 …

https://www.v3.co.uk/v3-uk/news/3064965/acorn-computers-risc-os-operating-system-goes-open-source

I submitted the news to OSNews as well.

Then there is a chance of porting the OS away from the closed tool-chain to a modern open-source compiler.

I don’t understand why doing anything with the DDE is a precondition to what you want to achieve.

Download GCCSDK now and have a look how far you get in compiling RISC OS with it. John Tytgat did a lot of work to get asasm to a state of near-compatibility with DDE Assembler, so it is far from impossible with a little work.

Another possibility would be to adopt one of the alternative ARM assemblers (like “as” previously used in GCC 3.×.x) and port one of the simpler C compilers around (there once was an LCC port available – not sure where that went) to target the Acorn formats (AOF, AIF and friends).

For the ambitious amongst us – a complete LLVM infrastructure would be the ultimate goal. Start coding now!

I think the expression here is “Barrier to entry” – if you want people to contribute, why provide a big confusing wall for them to have to scale? With no open/free-of-cost tool chain, the only people that can initially contribute are those who want to port it to another tool-chain which, I would guess, is not everyone’s cup of tea. Make it open, make it simple and developers will come. Make it difficult and, well, there are lots of other open-source projects for people to choose from. As I said before, I remain hopeful that the coming announcement will include the DDE.

I think the expression here is “Barrier to entry” – if you want people to contribute, why provide a big confusing wall for them to have to scale?

Experience tells me that the real “barrier to entry” is the complexity of the RISC OS codebase and nothing else. Making the DDE available for free will not help there, the logical next complaint will be that a RISC OS machine is needed to run that DDE, then it will be the build system based on AMU, then the lack of a competent debugger, then that the code resides in CVS and is not available from GitHub, then that it all should be rewritten in C first…repeat until forever.

If someone really feels that spending 50 UKP is beyond their reach, just ask me – I have sponsored DDE licenses before for poor developers.

Since the start of open-sourcing RISC OS there has been talk about the whole toolchain issue time and again. But still, nobody has seriously tackled the problem until now, which suggests to me that it is likely that nobody with the necessary determination for OS development really exists (who is not able/does not want to spend a few bucks on DDE).

if you want people to contribute, why provide a big confusing wall for them to have to scale?

The fact of purchasing the DDE is not the big confusing issue. That you’re going to need to understand some pretty hardcore what-the-hell assembler. It isn’t written in the trendy langue du jour…

the only people that can initially contribute are those who want to port it to another tool-chain

And those who are willing to buy the DDE…

make it simple and developers will come

Somehow I figure I won’t hold my breath…