Open Working

BTW I just noted this from John Jeffords:

Which is my point over Iris. An R-Comp release. Why do R-Comp get to release a separate version? Do others? As I am repeatedly told, RComp and RiscOSDev are separate companies, so why does this happen?

John please note that the Iris version on sales on the !Store App is sold by ROD (RISC OS Developments), not RComp. Please have a look on !Store for more details.

So the release is from ROD and for both OBrowser and Iris, the package on sales has both the two browsers in a single zip file.

Hope this helps.

Yes on relatively small projects, made by people who have the possibilities and the will, it can be entirely free for the domain that purely concern such application. But please do not forget that the tools you used, or the OS and the libraries comes from other projects that may be funded.

Of course. However, I don’t think that Doug was analysing things to that depth when he stated that Open Source was FUD… :-)

@ Steve

Ha right! sorry! :)

Or, it might actually be… I don’t know… free? I wasn’t aware that it cost you anything to use any of my software, for instance – and the primary motivation for making it Open Source was to protect that.

I’ll side step the fact that I actually have paid to have the “Free” software delivered to me on media i.e a CD for a charity donation..

The incentive to donate for charity to get the software on a media I may wish or to contribute to the charity is in effect an “Invitation to treat” and I am getting something for my donation that I perceive has a worth.

Having said that I understand what you are saying and agree with the point made hence why I said some people do the work for the love of it and I for one appreciate the time and effort you put in to your software, and much more in the RISCOS community, and for making sure it is not closed and potentially lost in future.

Of course. However, I don’t think that Doug was analysing things to that depth when he stated that Open Source was FUD… :-)

I did say this :-)

I know if I look back on things I have done/said etc that I have lessons to learn myself and hopefully many more to come as thats the way we change for the better.

I’ll side step the fact that I actually have paid to have the “Free” software delivered to me on media i.e a CD for a charity donation.

It might be wise to do so… I always make it clear at shows that the software is available to download for free from the internet, and usually forego the opportunity of adding around 50% to the donations that I receive as a result. It’s always heartwarming to see people approach with a fiver in their hand, only to put it back in their wallet as soon as they realise¹.

And for completeness, the donations do not pay for the software or its delivery in any form: even the cost of the CD media comes from my pocket².

¹ Although it is balanced by those who pay for a CD and then don’t take one, opting to download the files themselves. You know who you all are, and thank you.

² For at least the past five years or so. Back in the RISC OS heyday, I did take costs from the money collected, but that ceased to be viable: these days, the money handed over goes in its entirety to the named charity. Spare a thought for the folk whose livelihoods depend on them breaking even and even making money at the events.

I promised myself I’d keep out of it now, as I don’t want to inflame matters any more than I already seem to have, but I just need to correct a misunderstanding.

@Paulo

I was referring to this quote from @Andrew Rawnsley about how he holds back the RComp release of Iris, until after a release to the ‘Shareholders’:

I understand your browser point. Suffice to say that we do try to act fairly, and that I (personally) ensure that the public release of Iris is always ahead of any R-Comp release,

To which my reply was the section you quoted:

Which is my point over Iris. An R-Comp release. Why do R-Comp get to release a separate version? Do others? As I am repeatedly told, RComp and RiscOSDev are separate companies, so why does this happen?

So, by Andrew’s own testament, there is an RComp release of Iris, in the form of ‘whateverBrowse’ that is included with their hardware.

As @Chris Hughes says

The version as supplied on the ARMbook was a cutdown verion of an early development version.

There is also the version supplied with his Pi-based machine that has been demonstrated at various shows.

I was aware of the £49 OBrowser and Iris set on !Store. My concern is with the RComp versions and how ‘cut-down’ are they, because Andrew implies they are just delayed in the above quote.

Elesar have now said they had no interest in bundling the alpha version they saw, so didn’t enquire. There’s no word from other vendors as to whether they had equal access to RComp to include similar versions of Iris with their hardware.

@ John

I was referring to this quote from @Andrew Rawnsley about how he holds back the RComp release of Iris, until after a release to the ‘Shareholders’:

I see your point, sorry I have misunderstood the initial post then.

Yes there were “alpha” quality releases done for the ARMBook (and IIRC also another RComp machine), but they were free and had to be downloaded, at least for me (they were not on the machine SD) and they were clearly used to help debugging the initial efforts.

The version as supplied on the ARMbook was a cutdown verion of an early development version.

That’s exactly the impression I had when I downloaded the early alpha for my ARMBook, plus the ARMBook is not an RPi 400 (lol) so definitely not a fancy experience tbh.

With that said, I agree that, if only RComp had such early adoption compared to other HW vendors it would be unfair, but Elasar clearly said they were contacted. Let’s see what other vendors have to say on the matter…

So, by Andrew’s own testament, there is an RComp release of Iris, in the form of ‘whateverBrowse’ that is included with their hardware.

Yes there seems to be a version for the Forte’ which is included in the price of the software bundle, it would be interesting to see how the dividend of such an offer go to ROD. But still the fact remain that projects like Iris are a lot of work (like a lot), it doesn’t matter if the WebKit library is available as Open Source. There are still plenty of work to do on the integration side, the code optimisations, the compiler work, the JIT for JS, the memory copying routines etc… just to get it usable on the of boards we are using these days to run RISC OS.

So, I would always recommend a word of caution, before saying things like “just give the source to ROOL and get it in their gitlab”. A gitlab submission (I am talking for the RO community on github mostly) does requires some degree of dependency checking, coding style, testability and build process in place. So it’s not just about “hey I’ve got some code”.
On ROOL’s git probably also integration with the !Builder too and Iris is a GCC (in particular a GCCSDK) type of product (and uses GCC 10, not even older GCC like 4 or 8). So to me (at least right now) this is out of the ROOL building process by quite a lot (but I may be wrong).

It might be wise to do so…

It’s always heartwarming to see people approach with a fiver in their hand, only to put it back in their wallet as soon as they realise.

Steve, I do 110% appreciate what you do and also I will make it very clear that I am happy to support the the charity donations at the shows and it wasn’t meant as a criticism.

The donations go to a very worthy cause.

However the thing is anything that is saying it is “free” still forms part of the offer which may or not incentivise you to take up said offer and hence pay to recieve it and that was what I was trying to point out.

I know you do say you can get it for free elsewhere.

Even if you do not personally make money from it , or as you point out actually make a loss, then it does have value as it forms part of the incentive/offer for donating.

So once again I am sorry if it came over as criticism as that was not my intention and I am sorry if I offended you in trying to make the point.