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RISC OS is being relicensed under the Apache license
- sverige 8y agoInteresting choice of license. It will be very interesting to see what kind of growth their community experiences as a result.
- tyingq 8y agoARM only, single-user, cooperative multitasking, 31 bit max file size and somewhat limited memory protection. I suspect the audience would be limited to niches where all of that isn't an issue.
- bunderbunder 8y agoBuilding an rpi-based education platform might be a good candidate. Though I'm not sure what the killer feature there would be, and there's already the pi-top in that space.
- Koshkin 8y agoIt might appeal to those people who are nostalgic about the sort of elegance and simplicity of the design that went into MS-DOS/Windows 3.1. RISC OS is not quite like that, but it is a fantastic system in its own right, especially since it runs natively and fast on the Raspberry Pi. I hope that this move will create a huge surge in community support of this beautiful OS.
- yuhong 8y agoThis should allow "GPLv2 or later" code to be used, right? (Allowing it to be ported to more ARM platforms)
- bunderbunder 8y agoI don't believe so. Here's the Apache project's position on the subject: "Apache 2 software can therefore be included in GPLv3 projects. . . However, GPLv3 software cannot be included in Apache projects. The licenses are incompatible in one direction only" (https://www.apache.org/licenses/GPL-compatibility.html https://www.apache.org/licenses/GPL-compatibility.html) (edit: Forgot to mention GPLv2 - that one is even less compatible: "Despite our best efforts, the FSF has never considered the Apache License to be compatible with GPL version 2")
- yuhong 8y agoYea, I know it might require the RISC OS kernel to be relicensed.
- csdreamer7 8y agoIf you are talking about the Linux kernel. Then yes, a kernel relicense is absolutely required.
- csdreamer7 8y agoI have received a few downvotes. Please note I was answering the above question that a relicense is absolutely required for compatibility with the Apache v2 license because of the patent provision that is incompatible with the GPL v2. This is the position of the Free Software Foundation. The GPL v3 has a patent provision and explicit compatibility with the Apache v2 license to end any ambiguities.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- cmrdporcupine 8y agoNice. So RISC OS is now open source. EmuTOS is an open sourced Atari ST TOS. Hell, Apple is open sourcing LisaOS. Why isn't AmigaOS open source yet?
- protomyth 8y agoI get the feeling the AmigaOS people still think they can sell it or they have a bunch of code that they know will be problematic to open source.
- simcop2387 8y agoEither that, or they don't have some of the code anymore. It's changed hands a few times so it's possible that some of it is only available as binary files packed into the ROMs and other places.
- kryptiskt 8y agoHyperion released a new version of AmigaOS just a couple of weeks ago http://hyperion-entertainment.biz/index.php/where-to-buy/direct-downloads/188-amigaos-314 http://hyperion-entertainment.biz/index.php/where-to-buy/dir...
- icedchai 8y agoAmigaOS 3.x source was leaked on github a few years back. Quite a few people have copies, though as you note is likely not 100% complete.
- Nomentatus 8y agoOne of the devs (as opposed to owners) is busy with DragonflyBSD. "Matthew Dillon, an Amiga developer in the late 1980s and early 1990s and FreeBSD developer between 1994 and 2003, began working on DragonFly BSD in June 2003 and announced it on the FreeBSD mailing lists on 16 July 2003." - Wikipedia, DragonflyBSD
- mariuolo 8y ago
- danellis 8y ago"the mission to reinvigorate the RISC OS market" They're nearly 20 years too late for that. The only compelling reason to use RISC OS over anything else these days is nostalgia. Still, it might be an interesting project to hack on.
- Kim_Bruning 8y agoRunning RPCEmu, I was surprised how real the nostalgia for old operating systems can feel! ( and I still haven't gotten Digital Symphony to work on any kind of modern machine. :-/ )
- danellis 8y agoI converted a lot of my music from SoundTrackers to Digital Symphony files because it had compression, so I needed half as many floppies. Now, with nothing to play them on, I regret that.
- Kim_Bruning 8y agoThat's terrible to hear! Perhaps you'll find some of them back here: https://modarchive.org/index.php?faq-torrents https://modarchive.org/index.php?faq-torrents Also, xmp will play symphony files, http://xmp.sourceforge.net/ http://xmp.sourceforge.net/ (installs fine on debian with apt install xmp ) If you just want to listen to your mod collection again, that might be sufficient already! :-)
- Symbiote 8y agoI had a look at the Icon Bar site [1], and I'm amazed that people are still able to sell software for RISC OS. I was given an informal (but firm) takedown notice in about 2002, when I uploaded an old game to my website and linked to it from a RISC OS forum. I'd thought RISC OS was dead then. [1] https://www.iconbar.com/ https://www.iconbar.com/
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y agoI don't know about that. There's a serious market for a real desktop personal computing operating system right now, one that is simple (note: not easy, simple), and enables users instead of trying to coddle them. Could RISC OS fill that role? Probably not without a whole lot of changes, starting with a conversion to preemptive multitasking. And worse, if anyone took it up they'd probably make it all POSIX and integrate a package manager and try to turn it into another Linux Distro. Still, I can hold on to vain hopes.
- 3rdAccount 8y agoI wish that the QNX OS was open source and free as in beer. How far away is this from being as usable as I hear QNX is?
- justin66 8y agoUsable for what purpose? They're about as dissimilar as could be.
- tyingq 8y agoI don't think they have much in common. There's not much out there really similar to QNX. Maybe Minix, since it's a microkernel with good userspace POSIX support. No "real time" support though. There's FreeRTOS, but it's not terribly similar to QNX either.
- 3rdAccount 8y agoThanks! My brain seemed to think the R in Reduced Instruction Set was for real time ...whoops! Neat project regardless.
- O1111OOO 8y agoWhen I first came across RISC OS years ago, I couldn't help but be amazed that the entire OS ran in only 4MB - and often burned to ROM[0]. Just the write-protection alone made this impressive to me - especially as something useful to the general population. A short while later, I came across an effort to run a riscOS-based computer (circa 2001), basically on batteries[1]. It seemed to solidy the 'light on resources' aspect of the entire riscOS stack. RISC OS usage[2] seems to indicate it's a little tricky (non-intuitive) for first-time users[2]. Hopefully if someone picks up development on this, improving the interface a bit (ie, 3-button mouse reliance, etc), plus adding wifi are things that are tackled first. Honestly... would hate to see feature-bloat creep in too much. I played around with KolibriOS[3] the other day and there's certainly a benefit to small and fast! [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RISC_OS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RISC_OS [1] http://www.explan.co.uk/hardware/solo.shtml http://www.explan.co.uk/hardware/solo.shtml [2] https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/turn-raspberry-pi-retro-pc-risc-os/ https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/turn-raspberry-pi-retro-pc-ris... [3] https://www.kolibrios.org/en/ https://www.kolibrios.org/en/
- Symbiote 8y agoRISC OS was the majority OS in British schools for part of the 1990s. It's not difficult to use, though it does have some different paradigms. Or rather, it went 100% for some UI decisions which other OSs only have as secondary features. Middle click opens a menu (like a right click menu on Windows). Usually this is the main menu, the context will change depending where you click -- to get a save option, you need to click on an open document. Everything is accessed through the file browsing windows. Opening document and applications, and saving documents (dragging them into an open window). Drag and drop is very common. I think that's all :-)
- andrewstuart 8y agoI wonder what the vision is for what they want it to become? Cause realistically most of the OS bases are covered now.