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Anybody heard from RISCOS Ltd.? |
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nunfetishist (14:37 10/12/2012)
VincceH (15:54 10/12/2012)
swirlythingy (16:34 10/12/2012)
egel (16:36 10/12/2012)
nunfetishist (16:48 10/12/2012)
filecore (09:08 11/12/2012)
fylfot (22:02 10/12/2012)
nunfetishist (00:30 11/12/2012)
bhtooefr (10:39 11/12/2012)
Bucksboy (16:40 11/12/2012)
sa_scott (20:29 11/12/2012)
MEmerton (12:43 12/12/2012)
polas (08:51 14/12/2012)
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Rob Kendrick |
Message #121627, posted by nunfetishist at 14:37, 10/12/2012 |
 Today's phish is trout a la creme.
Posts: 524
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It's all been very quiet from them for some time, AFAICT. Also, they're now very overdue on filing their accounts: http://wck2.companieshouse.gov.uk/cae9a249700d298ff97d369efd33af69/compdetails
I want to update my spreadsheet of doom. |
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VinceH |
Message #121628, posted by VincceH at 15:54, 10/12/2012, in reply to message #121627 |
 Lowering the tone since the dawn of time
Posts: 1600
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I was going to ask if you've been drinking the Kool Aid, because the link clearly shows the accounts aren't due until July 2013, which means they must be up to date...
...but then I noticed that after following your link I was actually looking at the information for Everest Limited. It'll probably be something else later.  |
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Martin Bazley |
Message #121629, posted by swirlythingy at 16:34, 10/12/2012, in reply to message #121628 |
Posts: 460
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I got Team Television Limited (dissolved 10/04/1995). |
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Wouter Rademaker |
Message #121630, posted by egel at 16:36, 10/12/2012, in reply to message #121627 |
Member
Posts: 17
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http://www.linkedin.com/pub/paul-middleton/11/b75/757
Managing Director
RISCOS Ltd
January 1999 – December 2011 |
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Rob Kendrick |
Message #121631, posted by nunfetishist at 16:48, 10/12/2012, in reply to message #121630 |
Today's phish is trout a la creme.
Posts: 524
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http://www.linkedin.com/pub/paul-middleton/11/b75/757
Managing Director
RISCOS Ltd
January 1999 – December 2011 Interesting. Companies House has no record of his directorship closing, as far as I can see. |
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Ian Chamberlain |
Message #121635, posted by fylfot at 22:02, 10/12/2012, in reply to message #121627 |
Member
Posts: 14
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I received this from PM on 14th May 2012.
Hi Ian
The situation with regards to Select is as follows:-
1. We haven't taken Select subscriptions for quite some time now.
2. Working with RISC OS Open to share development was investigated but the simple fact is that as Castle found when they wanted to use Select as the basis for their Merlin project whilst the concepts we have developed to improve RISC OS are perfectly valid for both RISC OS 5 and 6, the code base was not transferable because of the different directions that had been taken at low level in order to support 32 bit neutrality and hardware independence. Castle management thought that merging RISC OS Select and RISC OS 5 code would just be a couple of months work, but simple matters such as different build systems and compilers as well as more fundamental changes we had made to RISC OS, meant that very little of our code could be used on RISC OS 5 and similarly vice versa.
3. The opening up of RISC OS Six code to a public audience is highly unlikely to happen because a lot of the new 32 bit work in RISC OS Six was done by external developers working with RISCOS Ltd for their own projects with code being supplied to RISCOS Ltd on an exclusive basis. Anyone wanting to get access to RISC OS Six code would have to negotiate with lots of different people. Without rehashing old arguments, the fact is that under the Agreement with which we licensed RISC OS from Acorn / Pace the full Source Code to RISC OS should never have been publicly released, because quite a few companies (ourselves included) had paid significant sums for exclusive development rights to RISC OS for different markets. When Castle decided to start giving away the RISC OS Code this changed the RISC OS market forever. Many people now think that RISC OS should be free for everyone, and with new hardware such as the Raspberry Pi being launched for less than a takeaway curry, it is hard to justify continued development on RISC OS at a commercial level. There are many areas where RISC OS still excels over Windows, but the costs of supporting new hardware have to be recouped somehow and as we have no other products in our portfolio to subsidise that development, I suspect that the neither the RISC OS shareholders nor future RISC OS users will want to pay for that development when the value of RISC OS has been so undermined by the actions of Castle and ROOL.
4. We are actively investigating the options for putting RISC OS Six onto a Cloud based online platform, but we do not have any deadlines for that project at present.
regards
--
Paul Middleton
RISCOS Ltd
[Edited by fylfot at 22:04, 10/12/2012] |
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Rob Kendrick |
Message #121636, posted by nunfetishist at 00:30, 11/12/2012, in reply to message #121635 |
Today's phish is trout a la creme.
Posts: 524
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It's a shame they're not willing to at least ask the contributors about opening the source - I seem to recall that ROOL/Castle put a lot of effort into tracking down agreements. It was all worth it in the end.
Also, boggle about the cloud thing.
Also also, I suspect the fine for late filing of accounts will wipe out the remaining bank balance. At least, that's what duedil.com makes it appear. I wonder what tangible assets ROL have left; it may finally be time to wind it up? |
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Jason Togneri |
Message #121637, posted by filecore at 09:08, 11/12/2012, in reply to message #121631 |
Posts: 3868
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http://www.linkedin.com/pub/paul-middleton/11/b75/757
Managing Director
RISCOS Ltd
January 1999 – December 2011 Interesting. Companies House has no record of his directorship closing, as far as I can see.
I read that as "dictatorship"  |
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Eric Rucker |
Message #121640, posted by bhtooefr at 10:39, 11/12/2012, in reply to message #121636 |
Member
Posts: 337
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I'm trying to think what the cloud thing could even be, other than buzzword-chasing to give people hope of a ROL revival. (WebJames won't cut it for cloud hosting, and there's approximately zero people who would VNC into a server running RO6. That leaves some sort of "cloud client" (think the Chromebook), which runs into the fact that RISC OS doesn't really have software to do that.)
Also, I LOL at how they consider what ROOL and Castle did to be "undermining the value of RISC OS". Never mind that the value was almost non-existent to begin with, and ROOL and Castle have added a lot of value to it by opening it up under a non-commercial license, and allowing development to occur in the open. (The commercial value is still almost non-existent, of course, but apparently there is some, with people buying ARMinis.)
[Edited by bhtooefr at 10:41, 11/12/2012] |
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George Greenfield |
Message #121643, posted by Bucksboy at 16:40, 11/12/2012, in reply to message #121640 |
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Posts: 91
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ROL have been doggedly travelling up a blind alley ever since the company's inception IMHO: the decision to stick with the established user base and develop and refine a 26-bit platform, thereby confining the OS to use on slow, obsolete hardware or under emulation, was wrong in principle and doomed ROL's version of the OS to a lingering death. Sad, but hardly surprising. Were it not for ROOL and the development of RO5 I would have left RISC OS long ago, and I suspect I am not atypical. As things stand presently however, there is great cause for hope! |
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Stephen Scott |
Message #121656, posted by sa_scott at 20:29, 11/12/2012, in reply to message #121643 |
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Posts: 73
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I viewed the whole 'forking about' issue with a growing sense of disbelief. How a platform as small as ours could be further split, just amazed me.
To the casual observer, it just looked incredibly petty and small minded. The mid-noughties were a very torrid time for the platform.
The open sourcing by Castle, and with it, ROOL, was in my mind, a very clear headed thing to do. And who could have foreseen the inception of the Raspberry Pi?
The apparent demise of ROL is a rather sad conclusion. I hope that some of their work will somehow get merged back into ROOL's, for the benefit of all. |
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Michael Emerton |
Message #121658, posted by MEmerton at 12:43, 12/12/2012, in reply to message #121656 |
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Posts: 75
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"I hope that some of their work will somehow get merged back into ROOL's, for the benefit of all."
I have to say, on my RiscPC SA, RISC OS Adjust was a great upgrade for me, as the machine stabilised (wasn't reliable on 3.7) and ran noticeably faster.
As a programmer, I did like the alpha transparency sprite plotting and handling SWIs. |
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Nick |
Message #121661, posted by polas at 08:51, 14/12/2012, in reply to message #121658 |
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Posts: 27
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I agree wrt adjust on the RPC, it made a noticeable difference to me too and I do believe that ROS 4/6 have done a lot to keep people interested in the platform and maintaining their old hardware. Whatever people say about ROL, they have made a contribution (I believe positive) and if it were not for them then I think the landscape would look very different.
Having said that the relative failure of the A9 home (although I am sure some would argue otherwise) really was the nail in the coffin for the model described above. Hence I think it has become more and more apparent in recent years that ROL, by sticking to their existing approach, have become moribund which is a great shame.
If it was not for ROOL and the ports to new hardware then I think the future of the platform would look very bleak indeed and it is great to see, from a user's point of view, that so many people have gotten behind this effort and supported it.
[Edited by polas at 08:57, 14/12/2012] |
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