This all works better in a commecrial/business environment where ongoing support is a kind of insurance policy - home users never cough up for that kind of thing. RedHat Linux recognise that their chief strength, the one thing that Microsoft cannot touch, is just this ability for the customer to work alongside the developer and to have direct access to the technology.

Neither Pace nor RISCOS Ltd is set up to work in this way, so opening up the code would be a traumatic experience, probably ROL's finances would collapse for a start. But if Sun, HP, IBM and an increasing number of major corporate users can go some way down this road, I personally think a few traumas might be a good thing in the long run.

Remember when RISC OS used to lead the way? ;-P

Impression is no longer supported and hasn't been for a long time (IIRC CC stopped supporting it properly just after the RPC arrived). Change to Ovation Pro

As far as overall software goes RISC OS does lag behind in some areas (although it is catching up a bit). One of the major complaints is the lack of an IE capable web browser. Again, IMHO, it's less of a problem with RISC OS browsers and more of the fact that IE is awful at imposing the HTML standards - if it did a lot of websites generated with FrontPage 1 simply would not work. This leads to lazy website creation by people who really don't have a clue about the philosophy of the web (and thus shouldn't be in the jobs they're in).

Printers are a problem. In order write a printer driver you need the appropriate information from the manufacturer. As more and more printers are driven via software then the manufacturers become less inclined to tell people how their drivers work. It's not clear from your post whether the driver for the HL-1670N is open source or a binary install for linux. If the former then perhaps it could be ported.

Finally I don't currently think that the GPL open source model is economically viable. Most open source software is written by people who have full time jobs which effectively subsidise open source development, and there are relatively few companies making large amounts of money out of it.

As you point out the software could be free and the support and documentation paid for. The problem with this approach is that, given that I've probably only ever looked at about 4 manuals in 9 years of owning a RISC OS computer, why would I ever pay for the documentation? RISC OS software is inherently easy to use and the RISC OS user base tends to be more technically minded / able than their PC counterparts. All this combines to suggest that the "pay for documentation and support" model wouldn't work.

Personally I have no problem paying for software if it justifies its price tag. This includes web browsers - people should remember that IE has already been paid for - it's subsidised by your paid for copy of windows, of works, of office etc etc.