RISCOS Ltd


PRESS RELEASE 07/01/2008


RISCOS Ltd starts it 10th year of trading.


RISCOS Ltd is delighted to announce that it started its 10th year of operation on 7th January 2008.

The company was formed on 7th January 1999, after negotiations with Acorn Computers Ltd and Element 14 Ltd showed that there was a good chance that agreement could be reached on the licensing of RISC OS.

On 8th March 1999 Element 14 announced that it had agreed an "Exclusive Licensing Deal for new version of Operating System". The press release went on to state that "Element 14, the wholly-owned subsidiary of Acorn Group plc, today announce the contract with RISCOS Ltd, to complete the development of RISC OS 4, the latest version of the acclaimed modular operating system.

RISC OS 4 will give the computer a whole new look and feel - complete new icon sets have been created for devices, the filer applications and their toolboxes. Like all previous Acorn operating systesm, RISC OS 4 will be stable, scalebale and support a multitasking environment. RISCOS Ltd will complete its development and bring RISC OS 4 to market within the next few months."

Over the past 9 years, RISCOS Ltd launched the RISC OS Foundation, released RISC OS 4.02 as an upgrade for Risc PCs and A7000s on 1st July 1999. Licensed versions of RISC OS 4.02 to Castle Technology and then developed RISC OS 4.03 with support for the Kinetic StrongARM upgrade. Other specialised versions of RISC OS 4.03 were later licenced to RiscStation and MicroDigital, with an updated RISC OS 4.04 going out with the later Kinetic based Risc PCs.

In 2001 the RISC OS Select scheme was announced. A world first for a software project that was to be funded on an ongoing basis by annual subscriptions from end users.
After several further years of development the softloaded RISC OS Select versions were compressed to fit onto a standard 4MB ROM and released as RISC OS 4.39 which was better known as the "Adjust" ROMs. It took a further couple of years to complete the conversion of RISC OS 4 to become the fully 32 bit neutral RISC OS Six. Over the last few years agreements have also been put in place to licence RISC OS 4.02 and then RISC OS 4.39 for use on the Virtual Acorn range of products, which provide emulation of various ARM processors and Acorn machines on both PC and Mac platforms. The miniscule proportioned A9Home computer is first product to feature the 32 bit based version of RISC OS 4.

Work is ongoing to collaborate with RISC OS Open Ltd and we would like to thank all the subscribers to the RISC OS Foundation and the RISC OS Select scheme as well as everyone who has purchased any RISCOS Ltd product over the past 9 years and kept the RISC OS Community going.