An idea to make RISC OS Open Source

Now that there is a resurgence of interest in RISC OS by hobbyists using the Raspberry Pi it would be great if the same hobbyists could be motivated to enhance both the OS and the applications. Unfortunately the limited licensing of the OS is a definite barrier to this; you can argue that the ‘Shared Source’ is kind of open, but very few open source programmers (myself included) are willing to spend time coding for free in an environment which is not. If you are willing you’d probably go the Windows route and if you’re not, you would use Linux.

Obviously Castle Technologies believe that there is still some commercial value in RISC OS and the DDE (although one wonders where this is) but the reality is that it is only really of interest to hobbyists and commercial embedded software engineers would only be interested in mainstream development environments such as Linux.

So, here is an idea. Why doesn’t someone at ROOL who knows the person/people behind Castle ask them how much money they want for RISC OS under the proviso that, if the licence were transferred to ROOL (and I mean code, trademarks, etc.) it would be released under the GPL licence. We could then start a kickstarter (or use any of a number of fund raising websites) to raise the money and buy RISC OS.

This would only work if a) Castle are willing (and reasonable about the price) and b) ROOL commit to making the whole source GPL (i.e. one source-prison to another would not be attractive or useful to anyone).

Of course, I would implore Castle to consider the moral and commercial standpoint of RISC OS and GPL the code themselves but, since that seems unlikely, perhaps now is the time for another approach?

commit to making the whole source GPL (i.e. one source-prison to another would not be attractive or useful to anyone).

So, unlike a fair number of people, you don’t consider GPL to be a source prison?

The ethos of GPL seems to me rather like a badly behaved child “what’s mine is mine and what’s yours is also mine”.

Open source is perhaps a good idea, GPL doesn’t seem like truly open source to me.

GPL means that once it’s released as free it remains free and that the freedom provided to the user cannot be revoked. It works for Linux and therefore it would work for RISC OS too. We could argue the point, but I think it’s pretty clear that the GPL licensing model has already won this argument time and time again. I don’t think a debate on GPL is useful in this context.

My proposal is to pay Castle the commercial worth of RISC OS and then provide it gratis to everyone and ensure it always remains free (and that means GPL). Surely this is an ideal we could all get behind?

You can use GPL code for yourself all you like.

If you use GPL code in something that you release to the public, you are obliged to release your source code on the same free and open terms as that of all the previous contributors.

I cannot see a prison as any reasonable interpretation of the terms of the GPL. Not even an open prison.

It prevents people from leeching off other people’s work.

I would support moving RISC OS to the GPL, but not unless and until Castle have decided that there is no reasonable prospect of income to be derived from RISC OS in its present form.

I also don’t have any problem with its present licence terms. RISC OS is already open source, in a way that is helpful to many people.

I don’t think a debate on GPL is useful in this context.

A debate on GPL isn’t useful in the context of trying to convince people to switch to the GPL? :-)

But regardless of which license you’re advocating, the problem isn’t just that you need to convince Castle and ROOL to switch to it. There are also many components containing code owned by other companies, so there would be a lot of work involved in tracking down the owners (again) and attempting to negotiate with them (again), a process which will take several years at best (even once an agreement has been reached it can take a long time for the gears of some companies to turn and the relicensed code to pop out the other end).

Two OS modules which remain closed source which I can think of are MbufManager and ShareFS. If ROOL have been unable to convince the copyright owners to release the code under the Castle license (or under a BSD-style license, which is what ROOL prefer over GPL) then how much luck do you think they’ll have convincing the copyright owners to release it under GPL?

Considering that ROOL are already swamped trying to keep up with their day to day duties, I think the only way you’re going to get somewhere with this is to go over their heads – collect together your army of pro-GPL, pro-RISC OS programmers and set them to task with tracking down the copyright holders of all the RISC OS source code and negotiating with them to work out how much money they want (if any) to allow the code to be released under GPL. Then launch your own kickstarter to raise the funds needed to buy the rights to the code and process it for release.

See you in ten years time!

Seems a very negative collection of view-points and rather focused on what’s not possible as opposed to what is possible.

The fact is that the whole ROOL team are contributing code to the OS. Under the present licence Castle can (at any point) remove your access to the OS, keeping your work (performed under their license) and removing your access to the OS. This is closed-source, full-stop, no arguments. You have no freedom except that which is given to you on a temporary basis.

The argument about the closed source modules is also moot. Even modern Linux distributions have closed BLOBs (the Nvidia graphics driver for example). You can open-source everything else and leave the BLOBs in place for the parts where the licensing not owned by Castle. Eventually someone will rewrite the offending modules.

The shared-source licence allows ROOL to build a complete RISC OS build. GPL would allow exactly the same from the same source. The difference would be that no one could ever take away your access to the source or the runtime builds produced from it; in addition if anyone ever disagreed with ROOL’s direction, they have the freedom to fork RISC OS and go their own way.

Having said this, BSD style licenses would do mostly the same trick (although why you would choose it over GPL for a project with basically no commercial value is beyond me). My intention was to see if anyone is interested in approaching Castle and negotiating the paid transfer of the rights to RISC OS to ROOL. To finally bring RISC OS out of the nineties and into the brave new world of the open-source 2010s.

Personally, I’m certainly willing to try, but I think a consensus and some support from the ROOL team would be a definite advantage.

Under the present licence Castle can (at any point) remove your access to the OS, keeping your work (performed under their license) and removing your access to the OS.

Where does it say that, exactly? IANAL, but even if Castle decide to shut down ROOL, provided you comply with the terms of the license I don’t see anything in there which would allow them to take away your copies of the sources or to prevent you from continuing to use and modify the code or release new versions. Castle may retain ownership, but they don’t maintain control.

While you might talk of negativity, the problem is that for all the grand pronouncements, the GPL is only compatible with itself and requires associated code to be licenced equally (with a very vaguely defined concept of “linking”). This might be open source, but it isn’t truly free. In that respect, it is not so different to the existing licence (which could be argued is better because it accepts multiple licenses linked together).

although why you would choose it over GPL for a project with basically no commercial value is beyond me

Why choose something over the GPL? Many many reasons. Code that I release is released under EUPL, very specifically not GPL – but you can take my code and use it in a GPL project adapting the licence accordingly. When the GPL understands freedoms like that, then we can talk…

I think there is generally a misunderstanding here about the nature and purpose of GPL. There are other licence models (such as BSD) that grant you greater freedom to do with the source what you like however, the GPL licence is concerned with sustainable freedom, i.e. once your are provided with a set of freedoms such rights cannot be taken away, not by individuals or corporate bodies. The balance of greater freedom verse sustainable freedom is the reason why the GPL prevents certain uses which allow others to use your freely given work in such a way that they can prevent others from enjoying the same rights.

This is where the Castle license falls IMHO, they grant you a licence but, conversely this means they can revoke it too whether or not it is explicitly stated in the licence text. It is also why the GPL (despite it’s ‘faults’) is still the better choice.

Having said that, my underlying point still remains. Castle own RISC OS and they haven’t given up that ownership. This probably means that they consider the ownership to have commercial value to them. Commercial value is money over time, therefore such ownership has a price. If such a price could be agreed upon and they are willing to sell, then the licence could be transferred. If an audience of interested private individuals (such as we who like to use RISC OS) paid for the transferral, it could then be released GPL for the benefit of all.

At the moment RISC OS is closed source and you have little freedom with it. This could be changed… Even if you dislike GPL you would still be far better off with a GPL RISC OS than with the shared source model. All it would take is some agreement and a little effort.

GPL is not the only fruit! How is RISC OS not open source? How else do you think Jeffrey and others have ported the OS to the PI and various OMAP boards?

The only way I can see what you propose happening is if the RPI Foundation decides to buy RISC OS off Castle and I suspect they have other things they will wish to invest in.

Clearly a definition of open source is required here:

http://opensource.org/osd

RISC OS is not open source, not by any accepted definition of open source.

That means the rights that allowed the excellent work of Jeffrey and others in porting RISC OS can be revoked. Perhaps another company will buy Castle and then all these soft, friendly, ‘well it’s better than nothing licensing’ discussions will come to nought. Right now Castle own all the commercial rights to all of the modifications and improvements made to the RISC OS core. Not only have they worked for free, they have worked for free for the commercial benefit of a company.

Why does RPi foundation need to buy RISC OS? If you believe that, then why can you not believe that RISC OS users could do it to?

I still don’t see why there is so much negativity towards such a beneficial suggestion.

Not only have they worked for free, they have worked for free for the commercial benefit of a company.

How would RISC OS being GPL prevent Castle or any other commercial entity from making money from it? They won’t be able to make (much) money by selling it, but there are many other ways in which code can make money for companies. E.g. a company could replace all its expensive Windows boxes and licenses with cheap ARM hardware running a free version of RISC OS.

If you don’t want people to be able to benefit commercially from the work you’ve done for free, you shouldn’t be advocating any open-source license.

Note that I do agree that the Castle license isn’t perfect. Not because they might make money from my work, but because they might decide to discontinue the desktop version of the OS, preventing myself and all the other current users from benefiting from future hardware/software updates. But at the present time I don’t feel strongly enough about it to dedicate time/money to trying to convince the rights holders to switch to a difference license.

Simon: I think I understand your frustration and your surprise at the negativity. I think most people now contributing to/involved with RISC OS have concluded that the licensing situation is the best that is going to happen. Various similar suggestions have been made in the past but all have fallen:-(
I don’t know Castle’s position but I’m reminded of a company whose shares are in commercial terms worthless (i.e. less than 1% of what the shareholders paid) but I know that almost none of the shareholders would sell for 10% of what they paid (about 100 times current value). Their reluctance to sell is partially emotional but also “what if their product does take off and the company does get back on its feet”.
I’ve day dreamed myself like I know other RISC OS users have “What if I won the lottery, I could buy the rights of Castle and RISC OS Ltd and get the sources merged, ported to the latest hardware…” Then I wake up.
p.s. If it is yourself who did a “PIC18F USB device project” I’ve spotted on the net. I’ll drop you a line about a project I have!

Open source licences such as GPL do not prevent anyone from making money. In fact GPL gives everyone the same rights, so Castle could make money and so could you (if that was your aim). My point was that, by contributing to a close-source OS you are in fact providing benefit to the licence owner which they explicitly deny to you. The shared-source licence specifically states that you are not allowed to make money (i.e. a commercial use) and they are (since they own your IPR when you extend the core OS).

Since the shared source licence is effectively a grant of limited rights they could rescind the license grant and then you and everyone else would no longer have the right to use any of the code whether you have the source or not. This works the same way as the commercial restrictions, just because I can access the source it doesn’t mean I have the right to use it freely. The licence grant provides freedoms which are, at best, temporary. This is closed source. Just publishing the source code doesn’t count.

Going back again to my original post; this is a fact which discourages others from contributing. Just because you ’don’t feel strongly’ about it, doesn’t mean others feel the same way. My hope was that some people here within ROOL (or the wider community) would have some form of personal contact with Castle in order to open a discussion.

I don’t want Castle to switch to an open source licence. My proposal is that the RISC OS community buys RISC OS from them. The carrot-on-a-stick to get people to donate would be the code was released open source and perpetually free, i.e. GPL. The community buys it; the community owns it.

I’m running out of different ways to repeat the same point!

Chris> Sorry I only saw your post after I replied to the previous. My idea is to crowd source the money rather than one person buying it. I don’t think it’s an impossible dream :)

And yes, the USB project was mine along with all the other GPL software for PIC and AVR. Although these days I only publish for AVR since the PIC has a closed source compiler and AVR uses a gcc tool-chain. A decision made purely because I wanted others to have the freedom to use my code without let or hindrance (sorry couldn’t help myself from mentioning it since it’s in the same context as this forum topic :)

Simon, I don’t understand two crucial points you continue to postulate.

1. Why do you think Castle can revoke the licence? Please state the clauses in the licence that you think are relevant.
2. Why do you think that – if the community or whoever buys RISC OS from Castle (and we might even remember that it has been heavily disputed what Castle actually bought and owns) – the new owner can easily switch to the GPL? Old licence agreements have to be honoured. As Jeffrey said: see you in ten years.

I understand that many people feel strongly about the GPL. And I personally think that the GPL is a badly-worded licence. Think back to the days of the GPLed HAL and the discussions about what “linking” really means in an OS ROM context. It is not clear to me if your idea of “make components GPL, the non-GPLable parts can remain in binary form” is compatible with the GPL in the case of a RISC OS ROM.

In practice, the only two limitations of the Castle Shared Source licence are that it limits us to the ARM architecture and that it is not GPL (and not in any way GPL compatible, either). I find it hard to believe that a significant number of people are not willing to contribute because of the second limitation.

First, RISC OS is not an open source OS. That’s clear. Second, the Castle License is not so bad. There is NO way to make money from a desktop OS. We will pay… for what? (desktop: no service, no certification, no real support issues / RISC OS: small ecosystem so almost no gifts). Of course, Castle and other people could add things to some commercial versions of the OS, but their code will be published from day one (GPL) or never (other license).

With the current license, you pay for all the work of the community, and you get the right to be the only one to deliver some new components you made, before they’ll become available in the RISC OS source. And you pay only a license for a computer or appliance you sell (not for free computers or services). I’m probably one of the oldest open source advocate in Europe (editor in chief of the first magazine dedicated to open source), and this license have sense to me.

Other solutions could be the BSD/MIT license, but not the GPL. Imagine if you want to make a custom ROM with your applications. GPL kills any possibility to include non open source components in a ROM file. BSD/MIT like license could be OK, but people that provide and sell new components in their computers will never give back their work to RISC OS (> Open Core).

Castle provides a strange, but interesting license. Of course, I would prefer them: to become more like a foundation; to provide guarantees on the current license; to define how the money will be used to pay developers; etc. Many aspects should be changed, but not the license. That’s a very good solution to animate an ecosystem of core developers. To sell desktop open source software. Ahhh. See Mandriva (dead end), see Ubuntu (support from a very rich guy), see LibreOffice (no money for almost no one).

IMHO, RISC OS should stay as today, but in the hands of a more transparent and opened company. An open consortium to make a closed source product. Like Android in fact (it’s open source, but some components are used under license, by members of an open consortium). In a way, Castle already make this. This approach should be just more clear. I could help if they want :)

Castle:
I’m the owner and manager of RISC OS, an operating system for ARM (physical of virtual) computers.
I’m the leader of an open consortium around RISC OS. You can join us for free (list of users).
You can use RISC OS under licence, with some rights and discounts. And guarantee too for the future and prices.
I provide you the right to use and distribute RISC OS for free for non commercial uses.
ROOL is the company that develops the OS. It gets help from the consortium (money, etc.).

It would be better like this. But it’s almost already the case.

Android consortium is absolutely the same (of course the OS is open source, but Google apps are closed source, so it’s a free operating system for non commercial applications, since commercial applications needs the Google apps :) ).

1/ This is the text which I am talking about:

“1.1 Subject to the restrictions set out in the remainder of this Licence
Castle hereby grants to You a non-exclusive royalty free worldwide licence
to use, copy and distribute the RISC OS source code and object code in any
medium PROVIDED THAT you ensure that each copy You distribute incorporates
the text of, or an Internet link to, this Licence.”

Compare this to the GPLv3 license:

“All rights granted under this License are granted for the term of copyright on the Program, and are irrevocable provided the stated conditions are met. This License explicitly affirms your unlimited permission to run the unmodified Program. The output from running a covered work is covered by this License only if the output, given its content, constitutes a covered work. This License acknowledges your rights of fair use or other equivalent, as provided by copyright law.”

Note the specific reference to ‘irrevocable’. The Castle license does not have any such guarantee, nor is there a stated term for the license which is odd at best; since the code is published copyright should apply and therefore the maximum term of the license should not be able to exceed such a term. Sometimes you have to worry about what is not there (as this means legally it’s hard to know where you stand) as opposed to what is there.

2/ Since Castle are already publishing all the source code under their own license the only point you could have here is that you believe that Castle are breaking the law in terms of their own licenses? if so, great, let’s hire a lawyer instead and force them out of business. Do you have a specific example?

As for the rest, well, life isn’t easy. Sure there would be challenges, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try. If it turns out there are parts which can never be made GPL (and I don’t really see this since you can dynamically link in any BLOBs to which the source code is closed and under a unchangeable licence). Personally this sounds like FUD; worst comes to worse you could always use a lesser open license for the affected parts.

When you say “in practice” you seem to mean what effects you right now. With no real protected freedom to the source code, what happens next may be the bigger issue.

As for whether people are not willing to contribute because of the closed license, well that’s subjective of course. Personally the thought of someone else controlling my work (which I provided for free and the benefit of others) is a very big discouragement.

As for whether people are not willing to contribute because of the closed license

Be honest :) You’ll not contribute to such a small OS.

But you’ll probably contribute to a shared source effort, if it gives you a discount on the licence price for the products you sell. That’s what RISC OS is today: a closed source operating system financed (and so developed) by an open consortium of companies (you can join them if you want), and manage by Castle. The current role of Castle should just be a bit different.

Since the shared source licence is effectively a grant of limited rights they could rescind the license grant and then you and everyone else would no longer have the right to use any of the code whether you have the source or not. This works the same way as the commercial restrictions, just because I can access the source it doesn’t mean I have the right to use it freely. The licence grant provides freedoms which are, at best, temporary. This is closed source. Just publishing the source code doesn’t count.

True, but naive too. Even with GPL, trademarks exists. If I want to change the rules for the code I made, I can. Sad story, but in the Oracle/Google dispute, Oracle is right. for a big GPL project, license will not change, because there are too much contributors (unfortunately it’s the same for RISC OS). But it could be broken by one big contributor (and it’s the same for RISC OS too). If Castle could guarantee a fair use of his copyright (and a few other things), that should do the trick.

And if 3QD could sell a commercial package of add-ons for RISC OS (and be a member of the consortium, and make a 32bit version of VRPC), it would be almost perfect :)
Almost, because we need also a 32bit version of HOMM2 from RCOMP :)

In fact, if a package should be buy (to be opened or shared by ROOL/Castle), it should be Aemulor, because it’s a very important component for all the RISC OS ecosystem. With a consortium, members could give money to take the ownership of important software, and then to integrate it inside the OS (or to sell it).

Note the specific reference to ‘irrevocable’.

Which is a problem why? You have a copy of the source, and a licence to “a non-exclusive royalty free worldwide licence to use, copy and distribute the RISC OS source code and object code in any medium”. Castle can’t change that after the event: they can change future source releases, but not the current one (even if they withdraw the source, the stuff out “in the wild” can’t be undone, AFAIK).

Since Castle are already publishing all the source code under their own license the only point you could have here is that you believe that Castle are breaking the law in terms of their own licenses?

No. As has already been made clear, Castle don’t own the copyright for all of what is known as RISC OS: they own a lot of it (again AFAIK), but the rest belongs to other third parties who did work for Acorn back in the day. ROOL will have negotiated with those copyright holders to allow their work to be released under Castle’s Shared Source licence, alongside the stuff that Castle owns. They are very unlikely to have wasted time negotiating for permission to release third-party code under any other licences, such as the GPL, just in case things changed in the future.

So if you wish to re-license RISC OS as it exists on ROOL’s site, you’ll need to re-negotiate with all those third-parties. And if you wish to buy RISC OS, you’ll be dealing with more than just Castle — possibly with companies for whom bits of the code are tied up with stuff that does still have commercial value on other platforms.

As Jeffrey says: “See you in ten years’ time!”

It’s pretty clear that the core (very few developers of RISC OS/most vocal forum users) are quite happy with the situation and happy to discourage any ‘outside’ involvement with the project such as it is. The negativity and unwillingness to evolve the platform is, quite frankly, astounding. But, congratulations, you have convinced me that it is, in fact, a lost cause so, you’re right, I won’t be contributing. I’ll spend my coding time on Linux and AVR instead.

For the record I own an A440/1, an A3000, 2 RISC PC 600s and 5 raspberries and I would say “See you in ten years time” (as has been repeated to me several times), but RISC OS open won’t be here so I won’t.

It’s a shame you are all so set on failure and nay-saying that you don’t even consider a perfectly reasonable idea. Good luck with your closed source OS and happy travels in the 1990s.

You own that many RISC OS machines and this is the first you’ve heard of our negativity? I’m impressed!

Simon: no-one is being negative here. You are by no means the first person to suggest a more open licence for RISC OS. The subject has been extensively debated before. From that debate has emerged the reality that it would be pretty much impossible to do so for the band of amateurs that we are (in the proper sense of amateurs – we’re doing it because we love doing it) with the present budget (virtually zero). There have been numerous contributors to RISC OS over the years; many of them cannot be contacted, others can be contacted but won’t negotiate. Perhaps money would help in the latter case, but we cannot envisage a benefactor with enough money to change minds that are out of our control.

It’s not an ideal situation, but we have to be realistic about it. I have to leave it up to you to research what has been written in public about trying to get rights to all the bits of RISC OS.

(With the debate about changes to copyright law that has been taking place in recent years, it’s a reminder that RISC OS would benefit very much if abandonware were to have copyright restrictions reduced. But that’s a whole different topic.)

Idealism is good, but it takes far more than merely expressing an ideal to realise it. Much as we (who are also idealists like you in many ways) would like things to get better, we have accepted the reality that it would require things that are out of our reach and control.

I’d like to build an expensive house in a national park. It would be beautiful. But I’ve accepted that I won’t be able to do so.