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To: alsa-devel@alsa.jcu.cz
cc: kduffey@inprise.com
From: sharkey@ale.physics.sunysb.edu
Subject: Re: Trident's contribution, a draft 
In-reply-to: Your message of "Sun, 28 Feb 1999 12:19:58 PST."
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Date: Mon, 01 Mar 1999 11:09:26 +0900
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> With new hardware coming, and more being sold, that a LOT of potential
> linux users that wont be able to hear ANY sound on their soundcards,
> including me.

Not really.  It does affect new linux users who have switched from Windows
recently, but it doesn't affect old linux users, who know how to check the
Hardware-HOWTO before buying something.  I don't use much hardware from my
Windows days.  What would I do with a 40 MHz VLB 486?

> There are others too. I don't see any support for
> any soundcards that use system RAM based sounds.  Maybe you can tell me if
> the SonicVibes support has the ability to load DLS banks? If not, then
> really the S3 stuff only supports AUDIO playback, and not the best features
> of the soundcard.

Oh, come on.  ALSA is a relatively new project currently at release version
0.3-pre4.  Are you somehow surprised that ALSA 0.3 is not yet fully
featured?  You can't just sit down and write a complete driver suite in
an afternoon, you know.  Those features are planned but not yet implemented. 

Your point is that ALSA isn't finished.  My response is: "No duh."
 
 
> My understanding of ALSA is to provide a robust COMPLETE sound solution for
> linux users, that is "free". The only problem with the GPL is that a LOT of
> current developers/vendors do not agree with releasing their source code
> for ALL to see.

See?  That's the progress we've made.  It used to be that essentially NO
vendors would release source.  Now a few will, but a lot won't.  In the
future, a lot will and a few won't.  At least, that's what we're fighting
for, but it will take time.

> Part of the reason behind OOP was to "hide" the details so
> other developers using your code dont see your source..

Hmm, I don't remember *that* from my CS lectures...

> "sorry ALSA users, we will never support SB Live because its a binary only
> driver and we dont except that" you have pretty much shut off more than 1
> million users and counting from using ALSA.

Linux has about 10 million users.  You figure 10% of Linux users have bought
a SB Live, knowing it's incompatible?

> That means your "competitor"
> OSS (I think thats them) would have potential to support them and others,
> and thus have a much larger user base than ALSA. 

OSS pre-dates ALSA by quite a bit.  They are still the De-facto standard
for Unix audio.  ALSA is not attempting to compete with OSS at this time,
it's too premature for that.  All apps being written today must support
OSS if they're concerned about reaching a wide audience.
 
> more people would be willing to pay a small fee, or
> whatever to have support for their hardware.

That's funny.  Usually I have to pay money when I acquire hardware.  So
under your plan, I pay to acquire the hardware and then pay again to make
it work?  Or are you giving away hardware in a hope to boost driver sales?

The cost of drivers should be included in the cost of hardware.

> On the other hand, why is it necessary to release source code to drivers
> for soundcards?

Where have you been?

   1)  Security
   2)  Stability
   3)  Cross Platform Portability
   4)  Kernel Portability
   5)  Kernel Inclusion
   6)  Rapid evolution/bug fixes

> Almost all end users of ALSA will never need to worry about
> HOW the driver was written or ever touch it.

So?  That's not the point.  If only 1% of the users ever look at the code,
(and lets use your 1,000,000 figure since you like it so much) that means
you've got 10,000 people reading the driver sources, making fixes and
contributions that get included in the next version, and 100% of the users
benefit from the work of that 1%.

The fact that *I* have Jaroslav's code may not help me very much, but the
fact that Fred Floberg (among many others) has Jaroslav's code helps me
very much. 

> Besides, some companies would look at someone "changing" their code and
> re-releasing it as a BETTER or ENHANCED driver as if THEY themselves were
> incapable of doing so. That could look bad on a well established company.

But that's just foolishness.  All code contains bugs.  All code can be
improved.

Besides, I doubt too many people would re-release drivers.  It's too much
work.  They'd just send a patch to the company, the company collects the
patches, incorporates them into new versions, and releases their new version
of the driver with the patches included.  Users are already comfortable with
the idea that updated drivers will be released over time, so there's no
shame involved in that.

That's my last $0.02 on this issue.  I'm broke now.

Eric


