RISCOS Ltd
RISCOS Ltd is a company that develops and sells versions of RISC OS for the Acorn RiscPC, A7000 and relatives, and the Advantage Six A9home.
Standalone Products
- ROM upgrades
- RISC OS 4.02
- RISC OS Adjust 4.39
- Softload upgrades
- RISC OS upgrade CD (upgrades 3.6-3.7 to 4.02, or 4.02 to 4.39)
- RISC OS 6.14
- Other products
- RISC OS Select
- RISC OS 4.02 Virtually Free (low-cost copy of RISC OS intended for emulator use)
- RISC OS Adjust32 4.42 (included with A9home)
RISC OS Select
RISC OS Select is a subscription scheme for the latest versions of RISC OS. RISC OS 6.16 is the latest version currently available under this scheme.
Company History
RISCOS Ltd, were formed shortly after Acorn closed its workstation division. Consisting of people that were involved with Acorn and the software markets that used the systems, they started to negotiate with Element 14 (The company Acorn was renamed to) to license the Operating System from them. In March 1999, RISCOS Ltd managed to secure the rights from Element 14 and after receiving the source code, they set to work on RISC OS 3.8. In late April, Element 14 ceased trading and ownership of RISC OS passed to Pace. RISCOS Ltd continued development, along with Pace, for use in set top boxes and in July 1999 RISC OS 4 was released. However in 2003 Castle Technology, brought RISC OS "lock, stock and barrel" from Pace, and a legal dispute threatened to stop the development of the OS. In 2007, RISCOS Ltd released RISC OS 6 and also came to an uneasy truce with both Castle & RISC OS Open Ltd. However RISCOS Ltd's future is far from certain, when in 2009, documents containing the company's abbreviated accounts were published. These documents gave apparent proof that RISC OS Limited is in financial difficulty. Managing Director Paul Middleton, when asked at a recent RISC OS show, appeared to confirm that the company, and development were struggling. Since then a growing number of people have questioned whether RISC OS limited is still relevant.
