From alsa-devel-owner@alsa.jcu.cz  Sat Jan  9 02:24:26 1999
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To: alsa-devel@alsa.jcu.cz
Subject: Re: serial midi 
In-reply-to: Your message of "Fri, 08 Jan 1999 16:56:53 +0100."
             <008f01be3b1f$9bf37040$47010180@pcbg> 
Date: Fri, 08 Jan 1999 20:22:25 -0500
From: Paul Barton-Davis <pbd@op.net>
Reply-To: alsa-devel@alsa.jcu.cz
Sender: alsa-devel-owner@alsa.jcu.cz
Precedence: list

>as some companies insist on having a NDA signed OR wish to develop their own
>Linux drivers (we've been talking about Yamaha DSP Factory and CreamWare
>Pulsar before which BTW are great cards), would it be possible to segment
>the ALSA directories for various licenses... One could try to convince high
>end card makers that ALSA is better than OSS to support their card
>functionalities (and it IS the truth) and have them make the ALSA driver on
>their own...

All well and good, but many companies are going to have a different
response. Its not that they want NDA's and the like, but that they
simply don't allocate whatever they perceive the resources needed for
the Linux (or any non-Windows, non-Mac OS) community to write a
driver. Its hard to argue with them when they have no written docs,
and the market for us is so small. Yamaha seemed very willing to have
a Linux driver written for the DSP factory, but when they realized
that it meant us getting enough information to do the job, they balked
because that means significant work for them. This is not an NDA
problem, its an engineering attitude problem, and as long as most
companies believe that an Intel-PCI-ISA machine always runs Windows,
it will continue to be a problme.

--p

