the thread,
the sound
 daemons will automagically cease to exist once
 developpers realize there
 is no need for them.  But it would be good to speed
 up the process. 
 YES to that :-). 
 
The desktop soundservers will not disappear. KDE also runs on
other platforms than Linux and they need the server to
support multiple audio subsystems.
Furthermore, a KDE/Gnome soundserver makes it very easy to let
play any application bells and whistles ("You have mail")
just by including some lines of code.
So, the mess will persist. I'm really glad that the ALSA team
has put efforts in DMIX and enabled it per default so
multiple soundservers can coexist.
Best regards
    ce