Daniels msgs:
<snip>
> I think that's up to the developer to decide.
I'm not saying it isn't.
> 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.
Define access.
> Perhaps - but let me put it like this. The professional Linux audio
> market is currently so small as to be insignificant to a hardware
> company. We currently rely on good will to get any loan hardware or
> specifications.
What is a professional Linux audio market?
Is it the small linuxaudio userbase(both consumer users and professionals)?
Define linux audio market.
Yes we rely on good will, but sucking up won't help us any further,
it's only going to make things worse. The key here is to make the userbase wider.
<snip>
> With the consequence that hardware support is still patchy.
Not at all. Lots of pro-grade audio cards have excellent drivers and support.
Besides, how is a loan going to improve the situation?
User: "i found a bug in driver X"
Developer:"Sorry, we don't have the hardware anymore"
To suggest or support a hw loan is highly irresponsible.
Let's look at the responsibilities:
1. responsibilities of a developer towards a company – to _return_ the
hardware:
a)they might require that you return it in the same condition with
respect to regular wear and tear, which is very vague
b)loan period – for how long can a developer keep a hardware?
> Besides, the responsibility I was talking about was the responsibility
> of an individual to work with the community in return for having
> primary access to the hardware.
2. responsibilities of a developer towards the community:
a developer can only work with people which have access to the same
hardware. Those can be developers or users testing the driver and
reporting. That means that more people need to have access to the same
hardware. Besides, not sure what the responsibility should be – if a
developer doesn't accept a patch, are you suggesting a "process of
arbitration overseen by the Linuxaudio.org Management Board" in order to
determine whether he was acting irresponsibly and the hardware should be
taken away from him or not?
The main point is, however, the fact that the *ALSA team* should
negotiate and request:
* specs if a certain hardware is available to them
* both specs and hardware donation if a certain hardware isn’t available
but popular and requested by users
I have been struggling to get specs for a certain hw, the company(a huge
music industry player btw, which i'm not going to name here but Steve
knows ;) decided after 1,5 years of searching for the right people and
convincing them that it would be ok to provide the requested specs(I've
been in contact with their R&D department). However, they required an
ALSA member to confirm that the specs would be used for coding an ALSA
driver. Jaroslav has helped us and confirmed that. It was ~2 years ago.
The moral of this short story is that ALSA has been acknowledged by that
company 2 years ago as an official source for audio drivers. That was
before ALSA was included in 2.6 which makes this much more significant.
ALSA project leaders or contributors can be already accepted as a
guarantee, they're no anonymous persons which will sell donated hw on
ebay.
> I think donors are looking for some responsibility from the community,
> which seems fair enough to me.
<snip>
> If a particular company wants to donate hardware worth thousands of
> dollars to a libre software developer, they won't expect it to be
> lost, damaged or sold on eBay.
They don't have to. See above(ALSA).
> I think we need to move beyond pure personal interest - to me, Linux
> audio isn't a hobby.
Unless you're running a company or being employed by one, it's a hobby,
no matter how much you want linuxaudio to succeed.
I wasn't talking about pure personal interest, read on...
> I think we have very different ideas about how the community works.
> Many developers do take their responsibilities very seriously,
> including device driver maintainers.
If you have a piece of hw lying around and you know you're able to
develop a driver for it, and given that you've got enough time and are
not lazy enough, you're going to do it so that you can use the hw
afterwards.
My 'personal interest' wasn't about open-source developers being pure
egoists that just don't care. Not at all. They wouldn't even opensource
their hard work if it was like that.
> So what happens when the cards we now recommend go out of production?
They're all 24/96 which is going to stay with us for a while.
> What about Firewire devices?
IIRC somebody was already working on support for them.
msg from Richard:
> But that's the manufacturer's fault - not ours. And use of the words
> "ours"
> and "we" here has to be under advisement it seems - some people want free
> toys to play with, some people want to be taken seriously in a business
> context and you can't apply a single loan policy to both camps.
I can see only one case where a loan would be appropriate:
a Linux Audio company developing an open-source Linux Audio project and
providing services - one of its clients has a certain type of hardware
which he needs support for. The Linux Audio company would borrow the
hardware from the manufacturer and get the needed specs in order to
develop, test out and finetune the driver.
Regarding the ZKM LAD conference.
Everybody remembers that endless thread on LAD and on this list.
About the usage of the term 'Linuxaudio' and the domainname.
I was suggesting to use that term for everything we have, that's the LA*
lists, the LAD site, events and so on and so forth.
While Daniel was claiming that linuxaudio.org is a different project.
If it is, it means that 'Linuxaudio' is different from 'Linux audio
developer' thus the conference should be called by the right name.
If the organisers of the event change the ZKM site and the LAD site to
reflect the change of name of that event to Linux Audio, only then
should it be called a Linux Audio conference. We should respect the
name, it's very likely that they had a reason to name it like that.
BTW i'm all for changing the name, that's why i was suggesting to have
linuxaudio.org pointing at the LA* lists and provide information about
events, sw and community news etc.
But it's up to Frank and Matthias to decide. Not you Daniel, not anyone
of us.
Marek
> Marek: just make a small effort to keep the discussion somehow
> 'clean'
> from subjective (sym|anti)pathies
I'm sorry these lines should be addressed to somebody else.
After being called a troll several times,
after reading several msgs such as:
"SO WHAT?????"
"i certainly do not want to face a stupid public tribunal such as this in
return for my efforts."
"i think spamming my inbox with greater frequency than the MyDoom
virus, and with less purpose, is trolling."
"don't preach freedom and deny others their freedom of choice. we've
had enough of this bigotry lately."
"it tends to attract folks with little to say and too much
time on their hands."
"marek, i must say you are getting on my nerves. people are trying to
get something done here."
"stop bickering now"
"subtlety has totally failed to work so far. i'm offended too by your postings,
too, and i'm really considering to filter your address."
"Sorry, but I will ignore your mails in the future."
"If you would like your agruments to be considered than do not bury them in such
nonsense."
"Tell you what Marek. Why don't we play a game of who can keep quiet the
longest? You start."
Fair enough.
It's time to start learning from your own mistakes guys. My lines were not worth the effort. Good luck.
Hello all,
I've been talking to a couple of companies about loan hardware for
libre software developers. Does anyone have suggestions about how we
might distribute this fairly, given that members are geographically
distributed? The best two options I can think of are:
1. Set up a 'centre of excellence' which builds up a good collection
of hardware - this might be at a university, or in part of a
commercial studio complex perhaps.
2. Loan the hardware for a fixed period of time, after which it gets
sent on to the next person who needs it.
I think the drawbacks to each option are fairly obvious. What do you
lot think?
Cheers
Daniel
Hello all,
I believe we need to convene a meeting (on-line) of the linuxaudio.org
management board. The issue has come up that some companies and
organisations seem unable to join the consortium because of clause 6
in the policy document.
It reads:
"Members of the Linuxaudio.org consortium agree not to sue other
members, or otherwise instigate prosecutions of members, following a
dispute over reverse engineering."
http://linuxaudio.org/en/policy.html
I don't think it's that these companies want to sue developers - it's
just that they are unable to promise not to sue. I'd like to see the
management board address the question of whether this clause is worth
keeping, and if so whether it's more important than wider membership.
Two companies have explicitly stated that this clause is the reason
why they cannot join the consortium. One university department has
said that it cannot commit to agreements of this nature on behalf of
the entire institution, and therefore cannot join either. It seems
likely that other companies and organisations may also be prevented
from joining by this clause.
The current members of the management board are:
Dave Phillips (Chair)
Patrick Shirkey (Boost Hardware)
Christian Schaller (GStreamer)
Jan Depner (JAMin)
Ron Parker (Mirror Image)
Steve Harris (plugin.org.uk)
Linuxaudio.org participants who have not yet nominated a
representative:
AGNULA
ALSA
Ardour
Audacity
Core Sound
dyne:bolic
Fervent Software
4Front Technologies
JACK
Linux Audio Systems
Lionstracs
Mandrakesoft
Rosegarden
Naturally, we can only have one person representing each project or
company, otherwise there could be problems with multiple votes.
Management board discussions are intended to take place on a
dedicated mailing list:
http://lists.linuxaudio.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/management
The list has public archives but membership is open only to board
members. (As linuxaudio.org director, I am subscribed for information
purposes, but of course I have no vote in management decisions).
If those projects who have not yet nominated a representative would
like to do so, I can add those people to the management board mailing
list. They can also subscribe themselves, but the subscription will
still have to be approved by the list admins (myself and Andrea
Glorioso of the Agnula project).
Cheers
Daniel James
Director
http://linuxaudio.org
Hope everyone made it home safely after the expo.
I'm absolutely shattered myself, butI suspect that has more to do with
getting pissed every night than anything else. Ah well.
I have a few photos, which I'll probably put up with a short report on
linuxmusician.com (or anywhere else anyone would like). I just have
to work up the energy to write the short report, that's all.
Daniel, many thanks for organising the stand -- and to AGNULA for
sponsoring it. (Damien, did you get your MIDI cable back? I'm
afraid I forgot about it, and I haven't got around to sorting through
the box of cables properly yet -- although I did notice I seem to
have gained an extra power strip -- whose was that?)
Also, my apologies to Bob for being such a doofus and not getting the
point with LADCCA/LASH. (In my defence, Bob, you really do need a
nice simple description of how it's actually intended to work from
the user's point of view, I mean in terms of starting and stopping
sessions, saving files etc.) Anyway I'll have to mull that one over
a bit and see what we can do about it -- I'll probably have more
questions for you but I haven't the brains to think about technical
stuff at the moment.
Now, back to the coffee pot.
Chris
> Do I understand well, MLP-compressed DVD can not be played back
> free on Linux, because of MLP algorithm is patented?
There may well patents on the technology, but that doesn't mean that a
libre software decoder is impossible, just more difficult. I think
patents on some parts of MLP were applied for, but I don't know if
they were granted yet. Patents within standards can be licenced on a
royalty-free basis - it's at the discretion of the patent holder, as
I understand it.
Meridian is mostly a hardware company, but they do sell MLP software
encoders for Windows, so there is the potential for competition from
a libre software tool. However, Meridian may be interested in seeing
their format adopted as widely as possible, especially since DVD-A is
not yet a mainstream format.
I suggest you read up on MLP using these white papers by Bob Stuart,
if you haven't already:
http://www.meridian-audio.com/lib_pap.htm
then make an enquiry to Meridian about Linux encoder/player support,
open standards etc etc. I'd be very interested to hear the response,
and I'm sure others would be too.
Cheers
Daniel
Just to add my observations...
The event visitors were very curious about the software - as I
expected, they'd mostly heard about Linux audio but hadn't seen it
actually working; that's a big difference. My favourite quotes?
1. I use Linux at work but I didn't realise it had a graphical
interface.
2. I use Debian at home but I didn't know there were any audio
applications for it.
3. It looks really good but - (intake of breath) - how much does it
cost?
4. I can't believe I'm really meeting Steve Harris!
The response to our stand from other exhibitors was really positive,
with the exception of Mark of the Unicorn. We had a lot of enquiries
about using ALSA with MOTU hardware, and I took the opportunity of
asking the MOTU representative directly. The answer was a straight no
- they don't want to release any source code, they don't want third
party drivers written and they don't want to support any platforms
other than Mac and Windows. By contrast, M Audio were very
supportive, and we also made good contacts with AMD, the BBC, Matrox
and smaller companies.
I'd really encourage Linux users and developers to hold similar stands
at the equivalent events in other countries - a number of people
asked us if we would be at Musikmesse in Frankfurt am Main (31st
March - 3rd April):
http://musik.messefrankfurt.com/frankfurt/de/
If anyone would like to co-ordinate an approach to the organisers to
see if we can take part, please get in touch.
Cheers
Daniel
Hello,
Just a quick note to say thanks for hosting the GNU/Linux Audio Centre
at Sounds Expo. We talked to a lot of people and made some very good
industry contacts too, so I hope we'll be able to be involved again
next time.
Cheers
Daniel
Hi Steve,
Thanks for the response. I had no idea that doc would make it out your
way, I'm a bit embarrased ;) Allow me to apologize for not being on
consortium@, these days I only get a couple hours of internet a week...
On Mon, 2004-02-02 at 19:19, Christian Fredrik Kalager Schaller wrote:
> From: Steve Harris <S.W.Harris(a)ecs.soton.ac.uk>
> Date: Mon, 02 Feb 2004 15:18:53 +0000
>
> On Mon, Feb 02, 2004 at 03:59:02 +0100, Christian Fredrik Kalager Schaller wrote:
> > Hi,
> > I just thought I send the list this link to a document written by Andy
> > Wingo about GStreamer and where we stand in regards to pro-audio.
> > The doc is a mix of where we are/what we are focusing on.
>
> Interesting, but he doesnt mention the part of gstreamer that truely
> problematic for "pro" audio - synchronisation.
I assume you mean synchronization with external clock sources (as
opposed to between different internal streams, like audio and video). I
think, and I could be wrong, that this isn't really a problem. GStreamer
is, as you probably know, a library for data flow _within an
application_.
In the simple case (the one I'd use), your GStreamer app can be a Jack
client, and all of the sync is handled in Jack. Transport support (for
informational purposes, or for master purposes) is not yet implemented,
but would be done via a custom clock. The internal clocking
infrastructure would handle the rest.
If you want to do this via the ALSA interface... well you'd have to code
a lot on the alsa plugin. But again, this isn't a GStreamer problem, per
se. It's just for plugins. If we can synchronise audio and video
together and to their respective outputs, the framework has the
generality to do so to any fixed clock.
Does this answer anything, or am I missing the mark? I haven't yet had
the opportunity to test synchronization properly. This inexperience is a
soft spot for GStreamer, but I hope a temporary one :)
> I agree that "pro" audio is a horrible term
Any better one? Could you just say "float audio"? Dunno...
Thanks for the comments,
--
Andy Wingo <wingo(a)pobox.com>
Greetings all,
Do we have list of the material which will be at Sound Expo? There was
this discussion about the power supply 2 weeks ago, but I didn't find a
complete list of the material.
I personally plan to bring a PC laptop + an RME Hamerfall, but I won't
be able to bring some monitors. Will we have mixer + monitors? I will
also bring a pair of headphones. I can also manage to bring a small MIDI
keyboard (2 octaves + knobs) but if somebody else already bring one it
is maybe enough (and I won't need to bring it in the plane).
About the demos, is there a global strategie? Will we run one computer
with the differents software installed on it, or do we run several
computers to show each software (our AGNULA case is slightly different
as we don't show a specific software but a global distribution). The
second solution raise the problem of space, power supply, acoustic level
and/or confusion.
Let me know if all of this has already been discuted.
best,
damien
