RISC OS Open Ltd. (also referred to as ROOL) is a

limited company In a limited company, the Legal liability, liability of members or subscribers of the company is limited to what they have invested or guaranteed to the company. Limited companies may be limited by Share (finance), shares or by guarantee. In a c ...

engaged in

computer software Software consists of computer programs that instruct the Execution (computing), execution of a computer. Software also includes design documents and specifications. The history of software is closely tied to the development of digital comput ...

and

IT consulting In management, information technology consulting (also called IT consulting, computer consultancy, business and technology services, computing consultancy, technology consulting, and IT advisory) is a field of activity which focuses on advising or ...

. It is managing the process of publishing the

source code In computing, source code, or simply code or source, is a plain text computer program written in a programming language. A programmer writes the human readable source code to control the behavior of a computer. Since a computer, at base, only ...

RISC OS RISC OS () is an operating system designed to run on ARM architecture, ARM computers. Originally designed in 1987 by Acorn Computers of England, it was made for use in its new line of ARM-based Acorn Archimedes, Archimedes personal computers an ...

. Company founders include staff who formerly worked for

Pace Pace or paces may refer to: Business *Pace (transit), a bus operator in the suburbs of Chicago, US *Pace Airlines, an American charter airline * Pace Foods, a maker of a popular brand of salsa sold in North America, owned by Campbell Soup Compan ...

, the company which acquired RISC OS after Acorn's demise. The source code publication was initially facilitated by a shared source initiative (SSI) between ROOL and Castle Technology (CTL), prior to a switch to the more widely recognised

Apache licence The Apache License is a permissive free software license written by the Apache Software Foundation (ASF). It allows users to use the software for any purpose, to distribute it, to modify it, and to distribute modified versions of the software u ...

in October 2018. ROOL hopes that by making the RISC OS source code available for free it will help stimulate development of both the RISC OS source code and the platform as a whole.

Operations

ROOL set initial goals to make the source code easily available (on the

web Web most often refers to: * Spider web, a silken structure created by the animal * World Wide Web or the Web, an Internet-based hypertext system Web, WEB, or the Web may also refer to: Computing * WEB, a literate programming system created by ...

), and also to establish a

wiki A wiki ( ) is a form of hypertext publication on the internet which is collaboratively edited and managed by its audience directly through a web browser. A typical wiki contains multiple pages that can either be edited by the public or l ...

forum Forum or The Forum may refer to: Common uses *Forum (legal), designated space for public expression in the United States *Forum (Roman), open public space within a Roman city **Roman Forum, most famous example * Internet forum, discussion board ...

and

bug tracker Tracking system or defect tracking system is a software application that keeps track of reported software bugs in software development projects. It may be regarded as a type of issue tracking system. Many bug tracking systems, such as those used ...

. These have been available since December 2006. Operations exist to facilitate tasks related to ROOL's goals. Additionally, staff undertake development work on the code themselves. Since early 2009, ownership, development and sales of the tools were transferred to RISC OS Open. As an extension to the initial goals, in 2011 ROOL introduced a bounty scheme to encourage further development. Attendance at

computer show A trade show, also known as trade fair, trade exhibition, or trade exposition, is an exhibition organized so that companies in a specific industry can showcase and demonstrate their latest products and services, meet with industry partners and ...

s is often arranged, with other knowledgeable coders sometimes standing in when ROOL staff are unavailable. A

Facebook page Facebook is a social-network service website launched on February 4, 2004, by Mark Zuckerberg. The following is a list of software and technology features that can be found on the Facebook website and mobile app and are available to users of ...

and

Twitter Twitter, officially known as X since 2023, is an American microblogging and social networking service. It is one of the world's largest social media platforms and one of the most-visited websites. Users can share short text messages, image ...

feed was created in 2012 to communicate events via social media.

Publishing

A number of book titles have been published starting in 2015 with the RISC OS Style Guide, a three book set in support of the Desktop Development Environment, BBC BASIC Reference Manual and the RISC OS 5 User Guide.

Forum

Online discussions take place on the forum. Developers can seek technical assistance with writing software, debugging, and

porting In software engineering, porting is the process of adapting software for the purpose of achieving some form of execution in a computing environment that is different from the one that a given program (meant for such execution) was originally desig ...

the operating system to new hardware. End users can seek assistance with applications, emulation, and enquiries of a more general nature. A common area exists to make announcements that are broadly related to the theme of RISC OS, and discussion of future

wish list A wish list, wishlist or want list is a list of goods or services that a person or organization desires. The author may distribute copies of their list to family, friends, and other stakeholder (corporate), stakeholders who are likely to purch ...

features or applications.

References

{{RISC OS RISC OS Software companies of the United Kingdom Companies based in West Sussex Development software companies 2006 establishments in England Software companies established in 2006 British companies established in 2006