Hi Vord, On Fri, 2004-12-17 at 03:45, vord wrote: > LAU -- > > Correct me if I'm wrong here ... but ... lack of supported hardware is > part of the reason people don't migrate to *nix operating systems; and > another is the frightening complexity involved in doing anything with > *nix which the OS and its software inherits from the relatively small, > disorganized, underfunded community. add to this a dash of social > ignorance and general complacency -- perhaps some nearsightedness too? > -- and i think thats where we, the OpenSource community, stand with > respect to the masses. > > It is difficult to say which of the above issues is the biggest > hindrance to Open Source domination. However, hardware support is > crucial; and thats a non-debatable fact. Concordantly, it seems to me > that, if our goal is to spread cheer and free software throughout the > land to our fellow men, we MUST INSIST on developing drivers for > everything that has achieved either extreme popularity or extreme > utility. > > By INSIST i mean the following [taking this RME situation for > example]: a group of people [some ALSA-dev people, lets say] speaks to > RME about developing the drivers, agreeing to sign not only an NDA but > some other agreement which has the following [or similar] conditions: > (1) RME controls the source however it wants [open or closed] and for > as long as it wants. (2) the NDA team is not allowed the exclusive > right to modify the source, RME can do so in-house if it chooses, but > both groups must be notified of alterations and be allowed ample time > to inspect the source to make sure said changes do not break > everything before the new code is used to generate new binaries. (3) > RME and the NDA team jointly distribute pre-compiled drivers to LAUs. > [so on and so forth]. This is unacceptable unless RME is willing to pay for such service. As an owner of fireface and open source believer i can only tell that i'm not interested in closed source drivers. Even if they already existed i wouldn't be insterested in keeping fireface. The reason why i bought it is, i believed that RME would have no problems releasing such specs again. I absolutely believe in companies providing opensource support for their hardware products. http://www.audioscience.com http://open.neurosaudio.com Those companies already provide not only open source drivers but (in case of neuros) also schematics for their hardware and firmware source code. I certainly do not know how this should hurt them. Quite the opposite. Because if you don't do that yourself you'll end up like this: http://ipodlinux.sourceforge.net/build.shtml http://gallery.ipodlounge.com/ipod/thumbnails.php?album=6 Marek
