Steering Group adopts Acorn RiscOS division

Acorn will spin off its RiscOS business to reseller collective The Steering Group, enabling partners to take control of their own fate.

A meeting between Acorn chief executive Stan Boland and the four-strong Steering Group took place on 25 November in an effort to secure the future of RiscOS. The initial decision is that the Group will take over the RiscOS business and control research and licensing.

Paul Middleton, managing director of reseller Uniqueway and official representative for The Steering Group, revealed: 'The situation now is that the group will take over management and development of the Risc OS.

'The working title for the organisation is The Risc OS Foundation and it will be in charge of licensing technology to hardware vendors. At the moment, at least three vendors are interested,' he added.

The unprecedented move will salvage aspects of the scrapped #2 million Risc 2 PC project (PC Dealer, 23 September). It will also give flexibility to Acorn dealers to add value to systems, which was previously lacking.

Middleton added that the foundation will undertake research and development of the OS to develop a 32-bit platform. A meeting will be held this week to present the proposal to Acorn resellers.

The meeting signalled the apparent collapse of talks between Acorn and Tulip Computers, which had shown an interest in taking on the business.

In a statement, Acorn added: 'While these discussions are at an early stage, both Acorn and the Steering Group are hopeful that an agreement can be reached quickly which will provide a secure roadmap for all RiscOS users.'