
RISC OS is being relicensed under the Apache license - messe
https://www.riscosopen.org/news/articles/2018/10/22/risc-os-is-open-for-business
======
O1111OOO
When 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-
ris...](https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/turn-raspberry-pi-retro-pc-risc-os/)

[3] [https://www.kolibrios.org/en/](https://www.kolibrios.org/en/)

~~~
Symbiote
RISC 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 :-)

------
cmrdporcupine
Nice.

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
I 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
Either 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
Hyperion released a new version of AmigaOS just a couple of weeks ago
[http://hyperion-entertainment.biz/index.php/where-to-
buy/dir...](http://hyperion-entertainment.biz/index.php/where-to-buy/direct-
downloads/188-amigaos-314)

------
danellis
"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.

~~~
AnIdiotOnTheNet
I 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.

~~~
danellis
I think simple and useful are competing goals. RISC OS is simple, but there's
_a lot_ that it can't do. I expect that simplicity makes porting larger
software projects pretty difficult too.

> starting with a conversion to preemptive multitasking

I wonder how difficult that would actually be. I think it could be done
without changing the existing WIMP API. The Wimp_Poll loop would still exist
as is, just as in other windowing systems; it just wouldn't be the only time
it loses control.

And preemption has certainly been done before in Niall Douglas's Tornado
project.

~~~
AnIdiotOnTheNet
> I think simple and useful are competing goals.

Counterpoint: the stick, the knife, and the wheel.

~~~
danellis
That doesn't seem like a counterpoint at all. For example, a knife would be
more useful if you could also eat soup with it, but it would be less useful.

~~~
AnIdiotOnTheNet
Why would I want to eat soup with a knife? That sounds like it would cause
more problems than it solves. A knife you can eat soup with is exactly the
kind of over-engineered nonsense feature that modern OSs cram in. But I could
carve a spoon with a knife.

Let me give a less analogous example: Windows recently (or will soon, I
forget) have a Dark Mode, which will make window colors darker and text colors
brighter. This is a feature upgrade, apparently. Yet back in Windows 95 people
would have laughed at you for making a big deal out of that, because you could
just arbitrarily change all the window and text colors at will. No reghacks,
no CSS, just a simple settings widget [0].

Another example is how ludicrous application installation has become. In the
DOS and MacOS Classic days you just copied a folder to a disk, any disk, and
ran it and it worked. Nowadays there's package managers and SxS and you can't
even install applications to different disks. Is the former method more
limited? In some ways yes. But it is also much more flexible in others and
much simpler, it's easy to reason about and fits perfectly with the file
management metaphor that is the core abstraction of desktop OSs.

[0][http://toastytech.com/guis/win95schemes.png](http://toastytech.com/guis/win95schemes.png)

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3rdAccount
I 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?

~~~
tyingq
I 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
Thanks! My brain seemed to think the R in Reduced Instruction Set was for real
time ...whoops!

Neat project regardless.

------
sverige
Interesting choice of license. It will be very interesting to see what kind of
growth their community experiences as a result.

~~~
tyingq
ARM 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.

~~~
Koshkin
It 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.

------
andrewstuart
I wonder what the vision is for what they want it to become?

Cause realistically most of the OS bases are covered now.

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yuhong
This should allow "GPLv2 or later" code to be used, right? (Allowing it to be
ported to more ARM platforms)

~~~
bunderbunder
I 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
Yea, I know it might require the RISC OS kernel to be relicensed.

~~~
csdreamer7
If you are talking about the Linux kernel. Then yes, a kernel relicense is
absolutely required.

~~~
csdreamer7
I 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.

