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The XMMS Future in an interview with Dev

Posted by Hemos on from the we-look-and-sound-good dept.

Hexdancer wrote to us with the latest interview at theLinux MusicStation with Dev Mazumdar, co-founder (with Hannu, the guy who wrote the original OSS kernel sound drivers) of 4Front Technologies the commercial Linux/Unix sound driver guys. He's talking about the future of XMMS, and trying to make sound w/XMMS a killer app for Mac/Windows people, as well as the problems with working with some of the high end sound cards.

3 of 50 comments (clear)

  1. OSS vs OSS/free by mattdm · · Score: 3
    I'm sort of annoyed by the fact that the commercial product has advanced features they won't put into the free (both senses) one. But I can see that that's entirely within their moral rights etc., etc.

    What I really hate is the way there's bugs in the free drivers which don't exist in the commercial ones. For example, the free CS4236 driver has a problem where (even if the module is already loaded) the speaker pops loudly every time a sound begins playing. The commercial driver works perfectly.

    I guess my point is: it's slighly annoying to have features withheld for commercial gain, but withholding fixes to sell more product seems sleezy.

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    1. Re:OSS vs OSS/free by mattdm · · Score: 3
      sleazy, even.

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  2. Why OSS is leaving the kernel by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 3
    Hannu made two versions, OSS/Free which was GPL-ed, and commercial OSS. He refused to put certain features in the free version as that would have destroyed the market for his paid version which had those features. Eventually, people got sick of someone holding back Linux' development for the sake of his commercial product, and ALSA was created, with Hannu bypassed as the kernel sound developer. Sorry, Hannu, but in my opinion you had a conflict of interest.

    The GPL on the alsa.h file is not a problem for applications or kernel sound driver modules. Linus specifically makes an exception to the GPL for drivers that are loaded as modules (which must call into the GPL-ed kernel APIs) and in the same document where he makes that exception, he states that applicaitons that run on top of the Linux kernel are not derived works of the Linux kernel and need not be GPL-ed.

    Thanks

    Bruce

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    Bruce Perens.