the vendor deciding no longer to make ALSA drivers
next week because 96% of their users run MacOSX or WinXP..
this is a distortion. i'm not aware of any vendor actively supporting linux at all, so
open audio hardware would definitely be welcomed..
i mean in Echo's case, they gave some generic non-OS-specific driver code to some
Italian dude who ran with it, and eventually got it working nice enough to be rolled into
alsa-driver, for firewire it just happened that most vendors were using the same chip, and
even then afaik it still required using a patched JACK and bypassed ALSA entirely? and the
vendors have moved onto other chips by now? and no idea what is the story behind RME..but
i vaguely remember them pulling the rug out from whatever official support..
so yes, i think its a great idea. but we need to get audio first. then we can worry about
accelerated DSP..thats the icing on the cake really..