Copyright status of Acorn ROMs?

What is the current copyright status of the original RISC OS 2 and RISC OS 3 ROMS? Can they now be freely modified and distributed, or do they still belong to someone?

I will give you a pointer to the right place(s) to ask the question:

ROOL & ROD

Had you asked about 4.xx I’d have pointed you at an additional one.

The short answer is that they still belong to someone, so shouldn’t be distributed without permission. Similarly source code for older OS versions. Especially old source, as it won’t have been sanitised and made legally “kosher” in the way that ROOL have done with OS 5.

Furthermore, the history of Acorn and RISC OS is…convoluted.

So what we know is that this version of RISC OS is legit and kosher and able to be played with.

Over there lies the version 4 incarnation. That noise you hear isn’t the cooling fan, it’s flies around the corpse.

As to all the rest that aren’t on a physical ROM… good luck if you want to open that can of worms. Nobody has bothered because it’s 26 bit, it’s in the past, why waste time and resources and money on a relic?
Indeed, my only interest is to poke around the sources (those bits that turn up in dark alleyways) for historical interest, like “oh, so that’s why…”. Like, I’ve worked out what the CAM table is all about…..thirty years later. Just because.

Well while I agree with you Rick in principle… we should also say that right now the retrocomputing market for the Archimedes and RiscPCs etc… is going really well.

They are selling for good money on ebay and they ALWAYS sell. I do not know how many new RO5 expensive computers have been sold during 2020, but I can tell I have seen a lot of Archies and RiscPCs being sold quite quickly on ebay and for a lot of money through ALL the 2019 and 2020, with this year literally a peek on offers and sells.

Yes and I think there are some ideas of bringing a new RISC OS 3 version (3.20) to the Archimedes computers – which I think is an interesting idea. I must still have my old A3000 at my parants house somewhere… ;-)

Nobody has bothered because it’s 26 bit, it’s in the past, why waste time and resources and money on a relic?

Because nostalgia is a big draw to the world of RISC OS, and a lot of that nostalgia comes from applications which depend on the old 26-bit ROMs.

which depend on the old 26-bit ROMs.

Which currently work, have machines (albeit old and horribly expensive on eBay), and software.

In terms of thinking of the future, I can’t imagine many putting effort into machines that won’t have been produced for a quarter century…

Because nostalgia is a big draw

Oh, certainly. It’s better than turning on the news and realising exactly how utterly screwed the world is right now.

This is better: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6NBAZrdjQw

Yes and I think there are some ideas of bringing a new RISC OS 3 version (3.20) to the Archimedes computers – which I think is an interesting idea.

Yup, very interesting idea and it’s definitely welcome! :)

I must still have my old A3000 at my parants house somewhere… ;-)

Then please go find it and remove the battery, before that nasty little thing kills your A3000!!!! :)

Because nostalgia is a big draw to the world of RISC OS

Not just RISC OS, Amigas are selling a lot and we have also a fantastic NEW Amiga the Vampire V4 SA which finally is a fix to the bad classic Amiga Architecture and it can also be a fantastic Atari ST. The Atari are still selling so are the Commodore C64 and C128 (as well as all the others). The BBC Micros, the ZX Spectrums.

There are dedicated groups to restoring, preservation, improvements everywhere from FB to tweeter to forums etc…

There are NEW companies making NEW games and apps for such systems. There are tons of Kickstarters projects to reproduce, preserve, improve.

There are new on-line shops selling new things for the above. It’s almost like the age of micros is fully back. There are tons of channels on youtube et similar on the matter run by people of every age.

BUT it’s not just nostalgia… It’s also need for computers that people can understand in their entirety, and ,on a professional side, there is a need to form new generations of engineers that actually understand what they are doing and one of the best way to achieve that is to start from simple and then evolve to the complexity of modern CPUs/Systems.

Personally for me it’s all good, loads of fun, many people interested in making new games for my beloved MC6809, Archie, Amiga, Atari, ZX, C64 and more… My 6809 ASM tutorials on my blog are competing in terms of views with articles for Linux… it’s crazy and it’s a lot of fun :)

It all sounds interesting :-)

Note – this time of year can be most despressing – keep safe all.

Note – this time of year can be most despressing – keep safe all.

Vitamin D folks. The lockdown on top of minimal daylight in the nominally daylight hours means you are pretty certainly down.

Regarding RO2 – why? I don’t think anything was broken by moving to RO3 and the RO3.20 work should put all the applicable machines and emulators of those in the best state they’ve ever been.

My memory is not up to remembering any RO 2 > 3 breaks, probably because of the huge developer community back then, they would have been fixed very quickly.

As for RO 3.20, I recall getting my hands on 3.22 which had a lot of stuff which would appear on RO 3.5 on the Risc PC. Maybe we should skip to 3.30

As for RO 3.20, I recall getting my hands on 3.22 which had a lot of stuff which would appear on RO 3.5 on the Risc PC. Maybe we should skip to 3.30

Info to Jon Abbott would be useful.

yeah thanks Druck,
I think the reason Jon started from 3.20 is because the latest RISC OS for Archies was 3.11 in English and 3.19 in German, hence the next slot should be 3.20… but if there were 3.22 releases then probably better to call it 3.30 or something.

For that matter, what will be the copyright status of RISC OS 3.2?

For that matter, what will be the copyright status of RISC OS 3.2?

Probably the same as the status of the version / source of the base he’s working from.

Regarding RO2 – why?

Perhaps I’m being silly here, but RO2 could be useful as the starting point for a legacy application compatibility layer, simply because it contains the simplest viable implementation of the WIMP. A project I’m considering as a preliminary experiment is hacking an emulator to detect software interrupts at a CPU level, and then replicate the effect of some of these calls outside the emulator. For example, a simple program running inside the emulator draws a picture, and the hacked emulator tries to draw the same picture externally. This could be a useful way of jumping over the “where to even f***ing start” barrier.

Or would starting from RO2 be pointless in the simplicity respect?

While I could be wrong, I would expect it to he just as simple in RO3.1. You are just talking about patching the SWI handler, correct?

Yes.

And if there’s no benefit to RO2, mightn’t it be sensible to go all the way to 3.7 (after which the compatibility problems really start to kick in)?

A project I’m considering as a preliminary experiment is hacking an emulator to detect software interrupts at a CPU level, and then replicate the effect of some of these calls outside the emulator. For example, a simple program running inside the emulator draws a picture, and the hacked emulator tries to draw the same picture externally.

I think you might find R2 interesting.

I think you might find R2 interesting.

Thanks. I’ll look into it.

Depends. Some things break with ARMv3 (though not much), and if planning to emulate a StrongARM then many older thngs break. In other words it depends on what you want to be compatible with. All software for ARMv2, then stuck at RISC OS 3.11.

Come to think of it, a lot of the nostalgia market is rooted in the ARMv2 era. Maybe 3.11 is the best starting point.

Well in the 1990s most of us seem to have targeted RO2 as the lowest common denominator for things that could run on that HW.

So you’re targeting something that was retro in the 1990s?
That’s no longer retro, it’s antiquity.