Article URL: https://www.riscosopen.org/news/articles/2026/06/20/twenty-years-of-risc-os-open Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49143967 Points: 30 # Comments: 1

On 20 June 2006 we incorporated RISC OS Open Ltd with one slightly mad ambition: to take a proprietary operating system and open it up to anyone who fancied helping. Twenty years on, that has largely happened, and the RISC OS of today is in far better health than the one we inherited. To mark the occasion, here is the story so far, with one highlight for each of our first twenty years. Our thanks go to everyone who has written code, filed a bug, funded a bounty, contributed in our forums and wiki, tested a nightly build, or simply cheered from the sidelines. None of it would exist without you. Year 1 (2006-07): it started with a plan to do the unthinkable. Castle and ROOL announced a shared source initiative that autumn, and by the Wakefield Show the following May the very first RISC OS sources were in public hands. Year 2 (2007-08): batch by batch, more of the OS went out to the community, and the early momentum earned ROOL its second Drobe award, this one for “Best show of initiative”. Year 3 (2008-09): a first for the platform. A build of RISC OS 5 ran on an IYONIX carrying a great deal of community-contributed code, shown off to a warm reception at the Midlands Show. Year 4 (2009-10): the plumbing grew up. Nightly autobuilds began rebuilding and testing the sources automatically, while Jeffrey Lee’s port to the BeagleBoard, our first step towards cheap RISC OS hardware, took an Icon Bar award. Year 5 (2010-11): a neat idea took shape. The Bounty Scheme let the community pool donations and vote with their wallets for the features they most wanted to see from the roadmap. It is still going strong today. Year 6 (2011-12): working with Piccolo Systems, ROOL published an open source SD and MMC filing system, giving the BeagleBoard machines native memory-card support and laying important groundwork for the stable release ahead.