RISC OS Developments and ROOL partner to fund first phase of Network Stack bounty

RISC OS Developments are pleased to announce that we are partnering with RISC OS Open Limited (ROOL) to fund the target amount for phase 1 of the TCP/IP stack overhaul bounty. Following discussions with ROOL we have arrived at a breakdown of the work needed to fulfill this important first phase, and are very happy to work with them to fully fund this goal.

Networking and security is a key technology for getting online using RISC OS, and by extension, close to the heart of RISC OS Developments. It seems a very natural collaboration and we hope that this becomes of the first of many.

RISC OS Developments was set up early in 2017 by Andrew Rawnsley of R-Comp and Richard Brown of Orpheus, amongst others, with the goal of funding a number of projects to ensure the future of RISC OS, its developers and its community. Thanks to the various shareholders, the company has met its early financial goals, and is pleased to begin partnering with ROOL on this. We look forward to revealing future projects in due course.

If you are interested in learning more about RISC OS Developments, feel free to talk to Richard or Andrew at the London Show this weekend. Please be aware that some details are still under non-disclosure, as we prefer to announce things only when we have something significant to say… such as the press release you’re reading now!

More info on the ROOL bounty scheme can be found elsewhere on this site (for example, click the “Bounties” button/link at the top of every page.

That’s exciting news, Andrew. For clarity’s sake, what is the “target amount” and how will what’s already been pledged factor into that?

Good questions, mikko, and I’m afraid my answer will be a bit vague (apologies in advance). We had discussions with ROOL about how best to fund things, and have followed their suggestion in starting with the first phase. This is a big project that they felt best to do in stages. As I understand it, exact terms will end up being negotiated with whomever claims the bounty, so there’s a level of flexibility too.

We’ll be handing over a cheque this weekend at the show, but our hope is that it will be an on-going relationship for more work in future. But every journey starts with a first leg, and this is it.

As for the bounty system, because the work will be done under ROOL’s auspices, and released in the normal ROOL fashion, we’re pooling in with the existing bounty as that’s how ROOL prefer to do things. Our accountants and bank can’t really understand our business model because we are paying for stuff to be given away – madness they say… but essential for RISC OS future, we say!

Of course, supporting ROOL’s bounties is only one of the things we’re doing at RISC OS Developments, but more on that when the time is right :)

Great stuff. Vague is fine. I’m happy to embrace uncertainty; especially when it’s laced with such positivity for the future of RISC OS. :)

Andrew this is great news, many thanks for supporting an important next step development of RISC OS.

Great news. Now we just need a courageous and motivated programmer to actually do the work.

That’s exciting news, Andrew. For clarity’s sake, what is the “target amount” and how will what’s already been pledged factor into that?

It looks like the individual bounty pages have been updated to include a “guide target” amount. £2,300 for the first stage of the network bounty. Following ROOL’s lead, this is about a couple of month’s work for full-time employment at minimum wage, which sounds like a reasonable timeframe to me (although I am pretty bad at giving time estimates for programming tasks!)

Meanwhile, clipboard support is at £3k (despite the task sounding deceptively simple – I guess ROOL must anticipate lots of nasty Wimp assembler changes?), ARMv7 inline assembler in Norcroft is at £3.8k, further USB stack updates are at £3.9k, and filesystem partition table support is at a whopping £6.75k

I guess the largest part of the 6750UKP estimation is for the HForm replacement for the time it takes to reverse engineer the original BASIC version :-)

Great news. Now we just need a courageous and motivated programmer to actually do the work.

Reading between the lines, someone (who ROOL think is capable) has said they would do it for the “guide target” amount. I’m sure ROOL would be very interested to hear from anyone willing and able to do it for less!