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RISC OS Liberated

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  • Acorn Computer's RISC OS operating system finally goes fully open source

    RISC OS, the operating system that powered Acorn Computer's Archimedes computers in the 1980s and 1990s, has been fully released to open source.

    The move was welcomed by Raspberry Pi CEO Eben Upton: "RISC OS is a great demonstration of how much performance a well-tuned operating system and user interface can wring out of a platform. Moving to a free open source licence should bring a renewed interest to RISC OS."

    The shift to open source will enable the operating system to be used in new environments and markets, according to RISC OS Developments director Andrew Rawnsley. "This move unlocks a lot of opportunities for RISC OS that were previously inaccessible due to former licence restrictions. We look forward to seeing the exciting projects that this makes possible," said Rawnsley.

  • Roughly 30 years after its birth at UK's Acorn Computers, RISC OS 5 is going open source

    RISC OS was designed and developed by Acorn Computers, once dubbed the Apple of Britain, in the 1980s to run on the fledgling 32-bit Arm processor family, also designed by Acorn. Yes, the Arm that now powers the world's smartphones, embedded electronics, Internet-of-Things, and more, although it's come a long way since its mid-1980s genesis.

    The operating system, meanwhile, began life as the rough-around-the-edges Arthur 1.20 in 1987 for the ARM2-powered Archimedes A305 and A310, and by 1989, had morphed into the more slick RISC OS 2, written mostly in handcrafted assembly language for performance and memory-footprint reasons.

Graeme Burton, Inquirer.

  • Acorn Computer's RISC OS finally goes open source

    RISC OS, the operating system that powered Acorn Computer's Archimedes computers, has been released to open source.

    The shift to open source will enable the operating system to be used in new environments and markets, according to RISC OS Developments director Andrew Rawnsley.

    "This move unlocks a lot of opportunities for RISC OS that were previously inaccessible due to former licence restrictions. We look forward to seeing the exciting projects that this makes possible," he said.

    The move was welcomed by Raspberry Pi CEO Eben Upton, too, who swooned: "RISC OS is a great demonstration of how much performance a well-tuned operating system and user interface can wring out of a platform. Moving to a free open source licence should bring a renewed interest to RISC OS."

RISC OS goes open source with Apache 2.0 license

  • RISC OS goes open source with Apache 2.0 license

    ROD will be working alongside community maintainers ROOL to republish the source code to this popular niche operating system under the Apache 2.0 License, in a move aimed at removing existing barriers to entry for developers from the open source community and enabling free-of-charge use in commercial products for the first time in RISC OS's history.

A couple more articles

  • RISC OS re-released under an open source licence

    RISC OS, an operating system originally developed by Acorn for its Archimedes family of personal computers, looks set to enjoy a new lease of life with the announcement that it is to be republished under the permissive Apache 2.0 open-source licence.

    First released to the public in 1987 under the name Arthur, receiving its rebranding to the current nomenclature in 1989, RISC OS was developed to power the BBC Archimedes family of 32-bit personal computers based around Acorn's ARM architecture - the same architecture now found in billions of devices world wide and under control of Cambridge-based and SoftBank-owned Arm Holdings. Developed over a period of just five months as a stop-gap ahead of the release of a more powerful operating system dubbed ARX - which would, unfortunately for its developers, never see the light of day. While never as popular as Microsoft's Windows, which would soundly thrash the competition to become the de facto standard for personal computing, RISC OS continued to be developed and shipped by its creators until Acorn's demise and rebranding to Element 14 in 1999.

  • Acorn Computer's RISC OS operating system finally goes fully open source

    RISC OS, the operating system that powered Acorn Computer's Archimedes computers in the 1980s and 1990s, has been fully released to open source.

    The move was welcomed by Raspberry Pi CEO Eben Upton: "RISC OS is a great demonstration of how much performance a well-tuned operating system and user interface can wring out of a platform. Moving to a free open source licence should bring a renewed interest to RISC OS."

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