Drobe Closes Its Doors After Ten Years

Drobe.co.uk, the premier RISC OS news website, today announced that it has entered archive mode and will no longer function as a news reporting source. The site was founded by Peter Price in 1999 and editorship was taken over by journalist Chris Williams in 2001.

Chris first broke the sad news on Monday morning via usenet:

“Drobe’s RISC OS news service, which launched in October 1999, will sadly cease from Monday. Running the site has been so much fun over the years and the experience has been very rewarding – from the investigative pieces and tabloid tomfoolery to the libel writ threats and meeting up with users after shows. However, all good things must come to an end – if you’ll forgive the cliche – and it’s time to formally move on.”

Darn. Drobe was an excellent site and it’s painful to see it go. Credit must be given for keeping the content archived and not just deleting everything. Though not personally a RISC OS user (but would love to be), Drobe provided a really accessible face to RISC OS. There are still a number of RISC OS related news sites, particularly notable iconbar.com (named after the task-bar concept RISC OS had long before Windows ever did).

The loss of any major portal is a blow to any niche operating system; it’s hard to imagine a world without BeBits and AmigaWorld. It is important to OSAlert to cover niche / aged / alternative operating systems and I hope we can be of assistance to the RISC OS community going forward.

Thank you Peter and Chris for 10 years of dedicated work and I hope the RISC OS platform continues to grow ever stronger.

13 Comments

  1. 2009-09-21 9:48 pm
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