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RISC OS Open Reveal Shared Source Initiative

RISC OS Open have been in touch to reveal a new shared source inititive in partnership with Castle Technology.

From the press release:

Castle Technology 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.

Shared source will allow controlled access to a limited amount of the RISC OS source code. The release of the code will be phased, with phase one containing

The RISC OS build environment
The Shared C Library
The main disc-based applications (!Paint, !Edit, !Draw, etc)
Other disc-based applications (!Boot, !System, !Scrap, !Unicode, !Configure)
Browse (otherwise known as Phoenix), WebServe and related Fetcher modules
The USB Printer Manager, printer drivers and printer dumper modules
The configuration plug-ins
Some screen savers
Other modules which are handy for developers

Read more on the ROOL website.

RISC OS Open Reveal Shared Source Initiative

Chris (21:55 29/9/2006)
  Phlamethrower (10:04 30/9/2006)
    fwibbler (21:43 30/9/2006)
      pnaulls (22:54 30/9/2006)
        Chris (20:07 1/10/2006)
          guestx (20:59 1/10/2006)
            pnaulls (13:34 2/10/2006)
              guestx (18:17 2/10/2006)
                pnaulls (19:38 2/10/2006)

Chris

Message #94235, posted by Chris at 21:55, 29/9/2006

Member
Posts: 283

Wow. Surely a good move. Let's hope this brings more development, and a more regular release of RO updates from Castle for Iyonix users. Will be very interesting to see how this develops...

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Jeffrey Lee

Message #94236, posted by Phlamethrower at 10:04, 30/9/2006, in reply to message #94235

Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot stuff

Posts: 15100

":o"
 
(wtf? it claimed that over 70% of my message was caps!)

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fwibbler

Message #94237, posted by fwibbler at 21:43, 30/9/2006, in reply to message #94236

Posts: 320

This is probably a good thing I think.
It will be interesting to see what direction Paint and Draw are developed in and whether it matches with the much improved versions ROL have produced.
Hopefully the Shared C lib can be developed for use on all systems (A9).
 
Also, it would be nice to see a much updated version of Printers and PDumper modules. I used to see that as almost as important as a decent browser.
 
Speaking of which: I'm not sure if acces to Browse source code is a good or bad thing. Surely it will need so much work to make it competitive, that effort would be better spent on other browsers?
 
The SE Show 21st Oct might be interesting now.
Cheers!

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Peter Naulls

Message #94238, posted by pnaulls at 22:54, 30/9/2006, in reply to message #94237

Member
Posts: 317

"Speaking of which: I'm not sure if acces to Browse source code is a good or bad thing. Surely it will need so much work to make it competitive, that effort would be better spent on other browsers?"
 
Yes, although only Andrew could comment on how advanced it is at present. Although it has JS support, I doubt it has NetSurf's advanced CSS support. If there's going to be more original RISC OS browser development, I'd much rather see it in NetSurf. RISC OS has already suffered greatly from fragmentation of application development.

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Chris

Message #94239, posted by Chris at 20:07, 1/10/2006, in reply to message #94238

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Posts: 283

Yup - I hope Browse doesn't divert effort away from NetSurf, which is excellent and developing fast. I suppose, though, NetSurf development might be helped a bit by looking at the Browse source, maybe if JavaScript is ever attempted in the future.
 
IMO, the most interesting components of the above list are the SCL (especially being an A9 owner), the Printer Manager and Unicode (printing from NetSurf! :).

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GuestX

Message #94240, posted by guestx at 20:59, 1/10/2006, in reply to message #94239

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Posts: 102

At least with Netsurf, there's a possibility of using various open source JavaScript implementations. With the not-yet-announced Browse licence, it's quite possible that those implementations may have some kind of licensing incompatibility. But technically, having a decent layout engine (CSS isn't just about fonts and colours) is much more significant that supporting some old version of JavaScript, so developing Netsurf makes more sense. And from a licensing perspective, there's no doubt that Netsurf is the one to develop further.

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Peter Naulls

Message #94241, posted by pnaulls at 13:34, 2/10/2006, in reply to message #94240

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Posts: 317

"At least with Netsurf, there's a possibility of using various open source JavaScript implementations"
 
Why do I have to keep correcting this?
 
Browse, Oregano 1, 2 and Firefox all use the same JS _engine_; as would Netsurf. That's neither here nor there. What's missing is all the bits that tie to the browser to get the full JS functionality. That's the bit that has to be original and is a considerable amount of effort.

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GuestX

Message #94242, posted by guestx at 18:17, 2/10/2006, in reply to message #94241

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Posts: 102

"What's missing is all the bits that tie to the browser to get the full JS functionality. That's the bit that has to be original and is a considerable amount of effort."
 
I contest that it isn't anywhere near as much effort as writing a complete layout engine that works quickly and reliably for something like CSS2, which is what many sites depend upon today (and which is presumably what Netsurf supports).

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Peter Naulls

Message #94243, posted by pnaulls at 19:38, 2/10/2006, in reply to message #94242

Member
Posts: 317

Probably not, but we're talking 4+ years (existing NetSurf including CSS) versus a year or more for JS.

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