There will now be a version 4 of the RISC operating system. According to RISCOS Limited, it has gained an exclusive licence from Element 14, formerly Acorn, and it will offer an upgrade to A7000/7000+ owners in the next few months. RISCOS will also offer OS 4 for new desktop machines. The company says it now has access to the full source code and thinks it is probable it can remove peripheral chip dependencies. Paul Middleton, RISCOS MD, said: "The announcement by Acorn that they were closing the Workstations Division last year had sent shockwaves through the Acorn community. I see the signing of this agreement as a very positive sign for current Acorn users. Whilst Phoebe Risc PC 2 was cancelled by Acorn for very good reasons due to the current economic and commercial climate, users should not be dissuaded from buying RISC OS based computers." ®