[linux-audio-dev] OSS will be back (was Re: alsa, oss , efficiency?)

[Pieter Palmers]

James Courtier-Dutton wrote:

> Paul Davis wrote:
>
>> Hannu was the guy who made sound on linux possible in the first place.
>> Have a little respect. OK, so he and others decided to try to make a
>> business out of it, and they bowed down to NDA requirements from vendors
>> as part of doing that. Many of us never liked the results of that
>> decision, but its an understandable and, from some points of view, a
>> defensible one too.
>
> NDAs are not all bad. I signed an NDA with creative, and the result is 
> better support for open source drivers for Audigy and E-MU cards. I 
> choose the GPL license for my code, but I could have chosen any other 
> license I wanted.
> I am not allowed to copy the datasheets themselves, but I can write 
> anything I like in the source code. I.e. comments etc.
> So, I don't believe the argument that signing NDAs requires closed 
> source drivers.

I also signed a NDA to get the documents to work on FreeBoB. I don't see 
a problem there, as long as the NDA doesn't restrict me with respect to 
the licensing of FreeBoB.

Pieter