[Consortium] free linux driver development

Dear Mr. Kroah-Hartman, I am contacting you on behalf of the Linuxaudio.org consortium as the currently elected director. Although this email is somewhat belated, I am rolling here with a motto "better late than never." My name is Ivica Ico Bukvic and my interest is in discussing a potential bilateral relationship between your initiative and the Linuxaudio.org consortium. Namely, we would like to offer matching service for the audio drivers by pairing our member developers with potential OEM participants. I am convinced that our membership base has likely greatest understanding of the audio architecture in Linux kernel, including ALSA, OSS, and FreeBob (Firewire audio) drivers. I hope you'll agree the fact that all three projects are currently members of the consortium reflects the trust and support of the Linux audio community's in the consortium's mission. I am also convinced that this step is especially important since ALSA development team (employees of Novell/Suse) has been increasingly encumbered by secondary tasks and as such they have to split their limited resources between the ALSA API and driver development. For this reason, I would like to discuss with you establishment of such a bilateral relationship for the purpose of the overall betterment of audio hardware support on Linux in an effort to help ALSA and other projects persist and perhaps more importantly thrive. I thank you for your time and I look forward to hearing from you. In the meantime, should you happen to have any additional questions and/or concerns, please do not hesitate to contact me. For additional info on Linuxaudio.org, please visit www.linuxaudio.org. Sincerely, Ivica Ico Bukvic, D.M.A. Linuxaudio.org Director Virginia Tech Department of Music - 0240 Blacksburg, VA 24061 (540) 231-1137 (540) 231-5034 (fax) ico(a)linuxaudio.org http://www.music.vt.edu/people/faculty/bukvic