[Consortium] a few more rants...

[Daniel James]

> I would never advise open-source
> developers to borrow a device in order to get a job done for free
> and additionally have responsibilities(such as returning the hw and
> responsibility to work with the community on support for it).

I think that's up to the developer to decide. The situation at the 
moment is that many libre audio software developers don't even have 
access to good quality or up to date hardware.

> This 
> should be a responsibility of the company that manufactures that
> device.

I think donors are looking for some responsibility from the community, 
which seems fair enough to me.

> If you
> already own a device (whether donated or not) it's in your personal
> interest to get the driver done.

I think we need to move beyond pure personal interest - to me, Linux 
audio isn't a hobby.

> If you're not a developer capable 
> of coding a driver, you can either a) pay someone to get it done
> b) pester him and pray that he will accept ;)

With the consequence that hardware support is still patchy.

> That means there's no need to talk about responsibility. It just
> isn't how opensource works.

I think we have very different ideas about how the community works. 
Many developers do take their responsibilities very seriously, 
including device driver maintainers. 

> We should be advising people to buy hw which is already supported.

So what happens when the cards we now recommend go out of production? 
What about Firewire devices?

> Regarding the 'Linux Audio' conference announcement on
> linuxaudio.org:
>
> Daniel, AFAIK it's Linux Audio Developers ZKM conference, but
> sounds like it's now a linuxaudio.org conference.

You're trolling again. There is no announcement, just a link to a 
press release which I submitted to linuxpr.com on behalf of Frank and 
Matthias, with their agreement. I hope you've also been helping with 
publicity for the event.

> To quote you from 
> jan-12-2004 "Secondly, as important as the ZKM conference is, it
> has no official status." Well now it sounds it has got an official
> status. 

It is de facto the most significant Linux audio conference, but it 
still doesn't have the ability to decide what individual community 
members must do. Compare this to a political party conference, or 
that of a professional body, where votes are held to decide on 
policy. If you want to be a doctor for example, in most countries you 
have to join the doctors' organisation and follow the rules that it 
decides on - otherwise you won't be allowed, by law, to perform 
operations.

> But it sounds more like it's now a linuxaudio.org 
> conference more than a LAD conference.

I don't think so - there's no mention of linuxaudio.org in the press 
release, other than in the submitter line. Perhaps you should suggest 
that they change the name next year to the International Linux Audio 
(Developers Only, No Users) Conference.

Cheers

Daniel