Castle Technology Ltd (Castle) and RISC OS Open Ltd (ROOL) are pleased to announce plans for the opening-up of RISC OS source code. This step is a further major landmark in the development of the highly respected software platform. A primary objective is to bring RISC OS software to a wider community and to encourage growth in both the RISC OS user base and the developer community. This will be augmented by more rapid development of the software base and removal of critical barriers to use, normally associated with proprietary platforms.
RISC OS was designed in Cambridge by Acorn for their 32-bit ARM based Archimedes computer and was first released in 1987. RISC OS was specifically developed for the ARM core and its origins can be traced back to the original team that developed ARM (a major advantage for RISC OS). In 1999 the rights to RISC OS were acquired by Pace and then, in 2003, by the present owner Castle.
The RISC OS platform has been deployed in over a million Consumer Electronics products. Product solutions based on RISC OS are sophisticated, proven, reliable, and mature having had over 600 man years of development to date. RISC OS products are universally recognised as faster, more reliable and more efficient than many comparable competitive products. However one consistent objection to the use of RISC OS has been the fact that it is proprietary. With today's announcement, the parties believe that such an issue will no longer be a hindrance to its use.
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