The official reason that RISCOS Ltd. decided not to attend this year is that they have "cut back on our presence at exhibitions, since many programmers are happier working in isolation, rather than trying to help users directly with their queries". So no access to the programmers - contractors rather than staffers, which "has been interpreted by some people as 'RISCOS Ltd has NO programmers' which is luckily not the case". Let's hope this does allow ROL to "make the best use of those peoples' skills".
The main thrust of the press release (which I've uploaded to our site, as it contains more information than the version on the ROL site), was the news of RISC OS Select, a subscription-based scheme where for an extra £100 pounds a year you get access to three update CDs - updated RISC OS 4 ROM images plus early access to beta stuff. Access to RISC OS 4 updates - RISC OS 4.5, which will continue to be 26bit - will also entitle you to documents on the website previously only available to registered developers.
And what about developers? The cost of being a registered developer is set to go up - £500 per six months. This entitles you to "direct contact with the RISC OS Development team"; access to documentation will, as previously mentioned, be available to all RISC OS Select members.
RISC OS 5, the 32bit version of the OS required for access to more modern processors, seems to have been put on the back burner. "[T]he amount of work needed to convert major areas of RISC OS such as the kernel and ADFS will take many man months of work to complete and until we get sufficient commitment from our customers, that work will not be undertaken.". So what of the future? "[I]t appears that the availability of 26 bit processors will continue for longer than was expected.". This doesn't, however, address the problem of getting access to processors faster than 200-odd Mhz that we have had to endure for so long.
The quest for continuous revenue streams seem a little Microsoft for my taste, and time will tell if it succeeds or not. But without any commitment to a 32bit RISC OS it looks like we won't be getting access to any new processors any time soon.
