News from RISCOS Ltd No. 36 --------------------------- September 2nd 2006 ------------------ Dear All, This Newsletter is going out to all current and past Select and Foundation susbcribers to bring them up to date with the current situation at RISCOS Ltd. It is quite long as I am seeking to respond to a number of points raised by Select and Foundation subscribers, and other commentators on the RISC OS market. I have a policy of not getting directly involved in the often pointless discussions that take place on the Newsgroups and Bulletin Boards. But given the often ridiculous claims and suggestions made on them I feel that it is appropriate to respond to some of the matters discussed in order to put the record straight as far as RISCOS Ltd is concerned. Select 4 News ------------- I'm sorry about the protracted release of Select 4. As I have explained at Exhibitions and User Group Meetings this year Adjust32 is a subset of Select 4, and as such has to be complete and bug free before we can release the Select 4 top layer, which has the new and extended features. Select 4 is built from the same sources as Adjust 32, it is not a different version, so any known bugs in Adjust 32 have to be fixed before we can make a Select 4 release. Because of the changes that have had to be made to the RISC OS kernel, and many other areas of RISC OS, in order to support 32 bit operation, there are new bugs present in areas of Select 3, and Adjust, that were previously stable. I appreciate that from the comments made by certain newsgroup pundits that it may appear to some people that absolutely no work seems to have been done on Select 4 in the past 2 years, but the fact is that we have done the conversion of RISC OS 4 to 32 bit with far fewer resources than Pace had when they did the work on their version of RISC OS. A very significant amount of work has been done in many areas of RISC OS 4 over the past two years, with the kernal alone having had over 200 increases since the release of 4.39. The bottom line is that we have very limited resources and consequently some apparently relatively trivial problems can take a lot of time to resolve. We rely on volunteers for the Beta Testing of Select 4 features and a number of those have had to reduce the time they have available this year for various reasons. As soon as we have a Risc PC Select 4 first release available it will be made available to subscribers. We need users to re-subscribe in order to continue development. Contrary to the impression given by some people on the various discussion groups we are not taking lots of money and doing nothing with it. Select subscription levels have naturally fallen with some users unwilling to renew until a new release is imminent. However we trust that many users will immediately resubscribe when the first release of Select 4 is made. We need subscribers both to fund development and to justify doing it at all. I appreciate that many people feel that they want to wait until there is something tangible, but ultimately if insufficient people renew their subscriptions then we won't be able to justify ongoing development. To procedure to cope with lapsed subscribers will be as follows:- All subscribers who had paid-up subscriptions as of August 30th 2005 will automatically be able to download the first Select 4 release, or will receive the first basic CD if they subscribed with that option. In order to receive further updates of the Select 4 release with the full package of extras, they will however have to have renewed their subscription by the time of its release. All subscribers who renewed within the last year have had an extra 3 months added to their subscription period to thank them for their continued support. Anyone who has not renewed a subscription that expired for the period before August 2005, will have to pay for the full period since their subscription expired. This is simply to be fair to those users who have contributed to the ongoing development of Select. Select for Iyonix ----------------- It may be helpful for you to understand the following about the ongoing development of RISC OS. RISC OS 5 was developed by Pace Engineers at around the same as we were developing RISC OS 4. However due to initial ignorance by Pace of the potential for RISC OS to expand their product range, the 32 bit conversion work was done unofficially by Pace Engineers who were not in contact with RISCOS Ltd. RISC OS 4 was based on the work that had been done for the abandonded Phoebe project, which we had to reversion to be applicable for the Risc PC and A7000 products. 32 bit RISC OS however was primarily based on the NCOS project work which had a significant number of differences to standard RISC OS 4. In May 2002 a number of Engineers left Pace in order to provide an outsource support service for RISC OS to Pace. They also took on work for Castle to develop the Iyonix computer, which was released in October 2002. The internal structure of RISC OS 5 was by this time very substantially different to RISC OS 4, even though on the surface it has an almost identical list of modules to RISC OS 4. The Kernel is where the major changes of RISC OS 4 have been made, and these provide hooks for many of the other improvements present in RISC OS 4. Whilst some of the new features of RISC OS Select are self contained, many rely on other changes within RISC OS, which may or may not be present in other versions of RISC OS. For this reason, whilst we have been able to show a number of Select specific features running on top of RISC OS 5, by softloading replacement modules, the overall system is usually unstable when calls are made to other parts of RISC OS 5, which do not respond in the same way as the RISC OS 4 equivalent. Our timetable of events for future development of RISC OS 4 relies on first of all stabilising the 32 bit conversion work that has been done to provide support for the A9Home. Once that is completed we will then be able to release the Select 4 updates. We will then be able to look at adding Iyonix hardware support to the RISC OS 4 kernel. I must point out that we simply do not have the resources for these tasks to be done concurrently at present. They have to be done sequentially. With sufficient finance we would be able to look at taking on extra developers, but the current level of Iyonix user interest - circa 120 interested users - do not allow us that option solely to support the Iyonix. Taking standard 32 bit modules from the Iyonix to use as the basis for RISC OS 4 (32 bit version) was not an option as it would have been more work to add on the Select changes than to convert the existing Select version to 32 bit. We suspect that this was one of the reasons that Castle gave up on the Merlin project, when they began to appreciate the scale of the work that we had done, which goes far beyond the superficial cosmetic changes that some commentators try to make as being the sum total achievement of the Select scheme. New Pricing for Adjust ROMs --------------------------- Sales of Adjust ROMs have exceeded expectations in the past year, and the stock of ROMs that we secured for the launch of Adjust back in 2004 have now almost been exhausted. However we have been able to secure a new limited supply of 1,000 ROMs. As a consequnce we are now offering a reduced standard price for RISC OS 4.39 "Adjust" ROMs effective immediately. The new standard price is £79 incl postage for UK users. The price for users overseas is £85. The volume of Adjust ROM sales and Select subscriptions now gives RISC OS Software Developers a sound user base from which to justify the inclusion of RISC OS Select and Adjust features into their products. Programmers have to subscribe to RISC OS Select in order to get the latest technical documentation on ROL's stream of the operating system. RISC OS Adjust Users can also request access to the Select Private Web Site if required. Foundation Risc User Issue 20 ----------------------------- Foundation Risc User Issue 20 has just started to ship. Currently paid up UK subscribers will receive it next week, and those who have lapsed since the last issue will receive a copy in a few weeks time. Overseas subscribers will also receive it in a couple of weeks. This is the last issue to be edited by Richard Hallas, who is to return to University shortly in order to start work on a Ph.D which will ultimately document the history of Acorn computers. There will also be an optional DVD Edition as a compilation of all 20 Issues of Foundation Risc User CD magazine. RISC OS Northern Roadshow 2006 ------------------------------ The RISC OS Roadshow will continue in 2006 with visits "up North" in the week prior to the planned South East RISC OS Show on Saturday October 21st 2006. Regrettably it was not possible to find suitable venues north of Manchester for the Christmas Roadshow 2005, but we intend to remedy this for 2006. The plan is for the Roadshow to hit Glasgow on Wednesday 18th October, followed by Newcastle on Thursday 19th October. The Roadshow will then finish at the Guildford Show on Saturday 21st. As always any other RISC OS Software or Hardware developers are welcome to join the Roadshow. The costs will again be dependent on the number of companies that join the Roadshow. Local suggestions for venues are welcomed, but tentative venues have been set as Glasgow Rangers Football Ground and Newcastle United Football Ground. RISC OS going Open Source? -------------------------- There has been much discussion recently about the possibility of RISC OS being made an Open Source operating system. It has been reported that Peter Wild and Jack Lillingston have stated that RISC OS needs to be made Open Source in order to survive and that Castle are considering such a move with a potential small royalty of just a few pence per copy. I would like to point out that any such actions would have no effect on RISCOS Ltd's products. Comments have been made that if RISC OS 5 was made Open Source that products such as Virtual Acorn would suddenly be made much cheaper. At present this is completely untrue because Virtual Acorn currently emulates either the ARM610, ARM 7500 or StrongARM processor. Making RISC OS Open Source (or free as some people want) is NOT the panacea for suddenly taking RISC OS forward. No Operating system can be developed solely for Free. People have to make money somewhere along the line, and the experienec of making the front end to !Printers Open Source a few years ago did not unfortunately produce masses of new development on it. To develop RISC OS requires customers, developers and cash. RISCOS Ltd's customers are the end users. We don't have a second source of income from major developers who will pay megabucks for specific support that can then subsidise the home users. RISC OS on emulators -------------------- Our policy towards emulation of ARM processors and hence the ability to run RISC OS on top of other platforms is something that has always been a hotly debated subject. Five years ago, when the RiscStation portable and other similar products were under development, our policy was, as we had originally stated to provide continued support for those companies that were already in the Desktop market and to seek to find new companies to enter the market. VirtualA5000 was launched without any reference to the rights of RISCOS Ltd and at that time we wanted to provide encouragement to native RISC OS hardware. When it became apparent that the finance was not going to be forthcoming to enable RiscStation to complete the development of their portable, we bowed to the pressure that had been put to allow RISC OS 4 to be made available for use on emulators. This turned out to be very successful and has opened up new markets for companies such as Advantage 6, RComp and CJE to sell customised PCs to customers who need to have access to both PC and RISC OS software, but who can't spare the space for two machines on their desks. Don't forget that Acorn first recognised the need to provide access to both systems right back at the start of the Risc PC, and whilst it is not encouraging native RISC OS hardware, it is still providing a market for RISC OS software. It is worth noting that reading the registration cards returned from purchasers of VirtualAcorn products shows that many people who might have been considered to have left the RISC OS market many years ago are still obviously interested in RISC OS. The same cannot be said of the group of people who frequently comment on the Drobe web site. It was fascinating to note that of all the people who regularly complain about the lack of RISC OS development on that web site, that only one of them had actually been a subscriber to the Select scheme in the past 18 months. A couple had been subscribers for a short while at the start of the scheme and had since lapsed, but most of them appear to do very little to support the RISC OS market, by buying any products from us as they have never been Select subscribers, and they don't appear to have bought RISC OS 4 either. RISC OS Bug Reporting --------------------- Thanks to everyone who has continued to submit bug reports. Bugs can either be reported to the Select SmartGroups or direct to developer@riscos.com RISC OS Facelift ---------------- I am amazed that discussions on the Drobe group have now turned to the view that RISC OS needs a facelift when the same people were not so long ago complaining that the only changes that they could see that we had done to RISC OS had been purely cosmetic to improve the potential look of RISC OS. You can't win can you! Some of them seem to think that if they spend their time making obnoxious personal comments about me and other people in the RISC OS world it will improve matters. Well the fact is it won't. Standing Order Payments ----------------------- Due to an attempted Corporate Identity Theft we have been forced to change our Bank Account details with immediate effect. The new Bank Details are:- Account Name: RISCOS Ltd Barclays Bank Sort Code: 20-18-15 Ac No: 60221651 Please could everyone who still pays by Standing Order please ensure that they amend their Bank payment details for Select and Foundation subscriptions to new RISC OS account as soon as possible. RISCOS Ltd Holiday Closure -------------------------- The RISCOS Ltd Cardiff Office will be closed from Saturday 2nd September through until Sunday 17th September. We will reopen on Monday 18th September. During that time orders can still be placed by Fax, Email or Ansaphone. Orders will be fulfilled ASAP after 18th September. regards -- Paul Middleton RISCOS Ltd 3 Clarendon Road Cardiff CF23 9JD Tel 02920 492324 Fax 02920 492326 mailto:paul@riscos.com Copyright ©2006 RISCOS Ltd.