Though there is also some good news that even though the STOS sources was published years ago, Francois has officially passed its rights over to the STOS coders group to maintain an update however they wish.
This is a copy of the post by Neil Halliday on from the STOS coders group.
Hi All, a couple of updates for you…
Firstly, Michael and I just wanted to give you a quick update on Francois after he dropped out of the group yesterday. Most importantly, he is ok. We have been in contact with him over the last few weeks and so knew that this was his plan. He has some new projects that he is working on, which may involve him going over to the US. I am sure you will join us in wishing him well whatever his new adventure brings - we will watch with interest.
Secondly, if you remember a few weeks ago I asked a question about the rights to STOS and its related products. Although we are no closer to finding information about any related STOS products, STOS and STOS Compiler are still with Francois. I have had many conversations with him about various things over the last few weeks, including STOS, the activity within the STOS Coders Facebook group & website (and how the community is growing), and discussions about the future. He is pleased that STOS Coders is far more active than the AMOSPro group and wishes the Amiga guys could do the same as us. A BIG shout out to all of you for making our group so engaging!
As a result of these conversations, Francois has agreed to pass the usage rights of the STOS and STOS Compiler source code to me, and all of us in the wider STOS Coders community. As we know, the STOS source code has been open source for a long time now, and STOS Coders such as Chris have made massively valuable input into making sure STOS survives. This permission from Francois means Chris, Mike and I can start to consolidate all that code into a single STOS Coders GitHub repository and OFFICIALLY work on patches, optimisations, updates, and rewrites with the wider community. It even opens the door to us using the STOS brand name for new things. This is a huge thing for our STOS community, and we thank Francois for allowing us to be the custodians of his baby.
Over the next few days and weeks, we will be creating a STOS Coders GitHub page, and starting to upload the officially released source code. We will then be creating branches for any later patches etc where we are able. All this code will be freely available for the community to use, collaborate, and work on with one another.
Finally, Francois has handed over the Gipper project to me, which means we can look at finally making a game that Gipper deserves. Not sure what this will look like, but it is now on the roadmap for sure!
Happy STOSing.