On Sat, 2004-11-27 at 15:43 -0500, Lee Revell wrote: Just to save people some googling here is a thread that documents the long and colorful history of pro audio hardware manufacturers blatantly ripping each other off, often leaving the victims with no legal recourse: http://homerecording.com/bbs/archive/index.php/t-74439.html IMO the issue is not whether RME's concern is valid - clearly it is. Sorry, but arguing otherwise makes us look stupid and naive. The issue is how to address this concern. If that means a closed source Linux driver, fine. Maybe the reason no firewire hardware is supported is because Behringer and their ilk would instantly have all the info they need to copy the design and mass produce it. Doesn't matter how cheap the device is to design - it will _always_ be cheaper to rip someone off than design it yourself. They can even sell at a loss, due to huge cash reserves - they only need to sustain it long enough to put the competition out of business. In the case of the "Swizz Army Tuner", the original designers were ripped off by Behringer, but a lawsuit would have bankrupted them _even if they won_ so could not take action. I think many people in this thread underestimate how cutthroat the hardware business is. Lee

On Sat, 2004-11-27 at 16:22 -0600, Jan Depner wrote: Eh, it's a slow day, I'm bored. But I mean it 100%. Flame away... So, the next question is, what would it take to make a closed source driver happen? They should start the bidding on alsa-devel at "one free FireFace"... Lee

Hallo, Jan Depner hat gesagt: // Jan Depner wrote: Closed source drivers are *the* evil force threatening open source and free software. Closed source drivers means no open source drivers, that's a simple fact. Why? Because with the availability of closed drivers the (market) demand for open source drivers suddenly becomes as small as the handful of Libre Software supporters like I am one. The "just make my hardware work" type of Linux users is not interested in Open Source drivers anymore, so why should someone still write this kind of drivers? NVidia is the prime example. They provide closed source drivers, a lot of (probably most) users are happy about this, NVidia makes millions of dollars also in the Linux market. No free software drivers? Bah, who the heck cares? And who the heck cares, that you cannot buy a single modern 3D-card anymore, which has open source drivers, by any manufacturer? Oh, that's not the fault of the linux community, Matrox simply sucks, they don't provide binary only drivers, NVidia rulez. If RME doesn't want to support Linux for their FW card, that's fine with me. There are still enough alternatives. But think about this: There are no alternatives in the graphics card market anymore. Think about, why this situation is so? In this regard, providing closed source drivers and not providing docs is even worse than not providing specifications only. It's a trojan horse, and a big part of the Linux community bites it. "Just working" may be enough for most users, but it is not enough for me. And that's not because I would be an RMS zealot (at least, RMS is smart enough, to not let the Trojan horse in). It's simply, what decades of open source history have told those, who know about it: It's not Linux, that's the threat to the Big Bosses, it's the idea of Free Software. Ciao -- Frank Barknecht _ ______footils.org__

Marek Peteraj wrote: Free as in Nelson Mandela :) ~ Simon

Hallo, Lee Revell hat gesagt: // Lee Revell wrote: I do understand this very well. Because this is the central conflict: I will not deal with companies who hide their so called Intellectual Property in an area where many free software developers (Jarolav, Takashi, Paul, Miller, Linus, Guido, ...) release their so called Intellectual Property into a freedom so that it is not *their* property anymore but free to use for a whole community. As we have "Behringer" as a subject currently: "Behringer" is a problem for "Mackie", but we here invite people into our house to become "Behringers", and to become a "Behringer" is a good thing here. Ardour is trying to become a Behringer for Digidesign. Nobody can steal free software, because they already own it. (As long as they follow the rules as stated in the GPL etc.) IP however and free software don't match very well together. Free software is at least a decade older than the term Intellectual Property (read the Wired-CD text to learn more), which was only coined as a term to fight free property, to fight sharing, to fight Behringers, etc. Ciao -- Frank Barknecht _ ______footils.org__

On Sat, 2004-11-27 at 22:36, Lee Revell wrote: I don't think so. Currently there are new fw products coming out, in a few months time the audio market will be literally *flooded* with fw audio stuff. There's even mackie onyx analog mixer for which they offer an optional fw card for. Most of them *will* deliver 2-3ms latency i bet. And this under conditions which can't be guaranteed for many reasons(mostly rock-solid hw configuration which is guesswork to build most of the time, and *very* well tuned copy of windows that's installed). Heck i get crackles with a 256 setting with my fireface on an amd 2.2 system with amd761 northbridge and a g400(compared to what they claim, i.e. 1ms latency), don't ask what it does on a i815 chipset(which is crap chipset for critical applications such as audio but just to demonstrate). Of course i can't blame the hw manufacturers for that, it's simply impossible to guarantee that, it's just that it's achievable under some specific conditions. But nevertheless they *have* to deliver such performance because of the market. Now everybody does hiding it's own research from each other and the result is that there will be only these subtle differences in terms of performance. Who does suffer? Linux users. This just shows how healthy and benefitial the collaborative open source model is. Instead of working out an audio-over-ieee1394 standard they will just hide the stuff because everybody is just stealing. (their way of thinking) :/ So i think that no matter whether rme or other audio card manufacturer, in this case it's just not valid at all. Marek

On Sun, 2004-28-11 at 14:17 +0100, Mario Lang wrote: Ditto. A closed driver is not fine at all. It's worse than no driver at all, since it sets a /very/ dangerous precedent. (If you don't think it's a dangerous precedent you just have no foresight and havn't actually thought about the implications at all) If you want to use proprietary drivers, go use Windows or Mac OS or Solaris or whatever suits you.... seriously. Both Windows and MacOS are extremely superior in terms of support for Audio hardware (and software). Go use them. The solitary reason to use Linux you clearly don't care about so... why use it? It just doesn't make sense. I'd rather not have people with this ignorant 'closed drivers = good' opinion turning Linux into yet another Windows. If you want a sh***y proprietary OS, there's plenty to choose from already. Do the rest of us a favour and don't advocate turning Linux into yet another one. -DR- (P.S. Spare the flames. Seriously.)

On Tue, 2004-11-30 at 23:43, Lee Revell wrote: http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/11/21/141225&tid=190&ti… See post by slux. I used to share this opinion. Once. Marek

If there's no food available on the market that i need for various reasons(health, say celiac desease ) then i can just choose to not eat and die. Same thing here, although a less serious situation. I can just choose windows if there are no linux drivers. If i can't afford a windows license i can just choose not to have a computer at all. Note - Oracle's core product is software. So i still can *kindof* understand Oracle. NVIDIA, RME and others sell *hardware*. So whether they provide support for an additional open source OS or not, they will still make money. Of course they can expand to new emerging markets and invest so that they secure their position in such markets. Or they don't have to. But is it ok if *I* want to *buy and use* their product and they *don't* allow me to? Hell no! BTW I've read numerous articles about nvidia and ati ripping each other off. Cheating with benchmarks. Etc etc. If they provided oss dirvers, at least they'd be honest with all that. :) Nvidia - binary ATI - binary XGI - binary Matrox - binary Marek

On Tue, 2004-30-11 at 17:43 -0500, Lee Revell wrote: Linus' stance on binary only drivers is very well documented (since it pisses off companies like Nvidia quite a bit). It's far from positive. No, it's not better than no support at all. No support doesn't destroy Linux in the long run. Try to think on a little wider scale than getting one silly little sound card to work in your specific (x86, running a "supported" version of the Linux kernel) computer. There are more important things than trivial convenience for a small subset of Linux users (at the expense of all the other ones) you know. If you don't like your software being free and open, then pardon my French but you can go design your own fucking operating system. If not, you could at least have some respect for the ideals that are the reason for the creation of this one. -DR-

On Thu, 2004-12-02 at 00:29, Jan Depner wrote: Jan no offense. But i don't care about your 200 linux systems. Simply because if nvidia didn't care at all just like RME does with it's fireface, you would use windows on your 200 machines. But OTOH, if you had windows on those 200 machines before, had nvidia cards installed in those boxes, and in order to reduce TCO you went with linux instead of buying new licenses for a new version of windows, and were forced to use nvidia binaries because those machines had nvidia cards installed already, then that's kindof fine. Kindof because there still would need to be a very _pragmatic_ reason to ditch old versions of windows. But i certainly wouldn't advise people to go buy nvidia because of their "exceptional" binary drivers. Too careless. The problem is that there are not that many users still. And IIUC you're still somehow forced to do this and that with your kernel in order to get it to run, and it's still not runnnig 100% with every application(2 or 3 people reporting problems here during this long discussion). If they discontinue your nvidia card then you're either stuck or need to buy another card, having no guarantee that the new one will work flawlessly(and it's probably harder to give feedback such as bugreports on binary drivers - if not anything else, i can imagine communicating with nvidia - and no chance for an attempt to fix it). I think it's fine to use binary drivers if you have no choice as in - i had windows, switched to linux and heck no oss drivers!. But in that case, if you're an open source believer, you still should promote open source drivers. No matter how well the binary drivers are written. The point is not that someone might reverse engineer and do a worse/better oss driver. The point is that nvidia, ati, xgi, matrox *should* do open source drivers. Marek

On Thu, 2004-12-02 at 01:52, Jan Depner wrote: <snip> If you need max performance then you have no choice. But for linux audio it would be probably better to check out cards that are still available and do have oss drivers and then recommend those. I believe that there are some old radeon cards with passive coolers(isn't that what we, linux audio users want ;) that do have oss drivers because ATI does provide specs for their older cards(if they are still in production). At least AFAIK, please correct me if i'm wrong. Also, perhaps if more and more ATI customers went for their older cards, they'd certainly be forced to rethink their policy. That said i asked them to release specs for their latest GPUs, and i got a friendly 'no' response. The petition was at ~13000 signatures in Sept02. Today, 3 months later, it's ~20000 already. I don't know how many ATI units are sold worldwide in one year but the number must be huge compared to audio hw manufacturers. Still, 20000 is an interesting number. I think it's the same case here. The one who will provide specs first is going to secure his position in a new emerging market. Also, i can pretty much imagine the huge wave of new ultracool 3D demos in the demoscene squeezing as much juice out of the GPUs as possible if the registers & co documentation was released for a given GPU. So lots of positive things would happen. Let alone X.org and our new accelerated desktops. Or perhaps samplerate conversion done on the GPU in RT ;) That said, i can't buy older RME products anymore. The reason why i freaked out on their forum is that after 15 products were supported in alsa, after some people were cool enough to do the drivers which caused them to sell say ~100 units(i think it's a lot more). What's more, they provided support for it(helping people out, giving advices, fixing the driver is what i call support). So they took all that off the shoulders of RME. All for handing out a perhaps 15p pdf and 3-4 devices. All OK. But. Tim Hall said, that we should build our relationship on trust becasue it's a "two way process, which involves building trust". That's exactly what triggered my responses(besides them being arrogant to other customers in other threads). " We don't share this information with anyone. " So after all this, they called these people "anyone". If i were the author of the driver i'd be very offended and i'd just pay for the donated hw just to say.... ehm ;) They had my trust. ;) I think that the oss community would be able to convince someone. But then again, forget about politeness. It's a lesson i have learned. Marek

Fernando Lopez-Lezcano &lt;nando(a)ccrma.stanford.edu&gt; writes: I really need the fastest 3d performance, but I won't sacrifice my freedom for it. I would pay a months paycheck for some juicy 3d chip as long as it's usable to me. -- Esben Stien is b0ef(a)esben-stien.name http://www.esben-stien.name irc://irc.esben-stien.name/%23contact [sip|iax]:b0ef@esben-stien.name

On Thu, 2004-12-02 at 17:00, Esben Stien wrote: I'm going to do this aswell(still stuck with g400). Thanks for inspiring me. Marek

Fernando Lopez-Lezcano &lt;nando(a)ccrma.stanford.edu&gt; writes: You mean the rv280 chip?. No, I'm not able to use it to much. Need a couple of more years programming if I'm going to make my own driver;). The card of course is easily found on google. It's like opening a closet with toys that reach the ceiling. -- Esben Stien is b0ef(a)esben-stien.name http://www.esben-stien.name irc://irc.esben-stien.name/%23contact [sip|iax]:b0ef@esben-stien.name

On Thu, 2004-12-02 at 02:48, Paul Davis wrote: Oh sure they can, as it was the case with iriver. 2 years ago their forums were full of hatefilled msgs just because people demanded ogg vorbis and were ignored.(or at least it seemed so, no response from iriver). Today, we've got an iriver linux device, and almost all of their products support ogg vorbis. Still they haven't updated their pages properly and i wonder whether they're also not breaching GPL(see old 'GPL breach' thread in the archives) Paul, honestly. I can't explain why they haven't even *tried* to install linux with jack and ardour. If i were them i'd at *least* track the situation, just to *see* the current state and how well *my* products work with the drivers. I BET they would fall in love with it. Cause you can't do otherwise ;) And in such case, they'd probably deliver an alsa driver for fireface, fireface2, whatever themselves pretty quickly. And i'd be also interested in how many units were sold due to alsa.If i were them. If i were them i'd want every customer no matter what. No. Boycotting can a very powerful instrument. If there is a valid reason. And there is one. <yelling at everyone that shares this view ;> AUDIOSCIENCE There's them, companies striving for higher revenues. There's us, paying customers. Marek

On Wed, 2004-12-01 at 18:49, Paul Davis wrote: Does any of the alsa developers know or remember exactly why digigram changed their minds about open source drivers for the pcmcia cards (vxpocket)? Or were they reverse-engineered? We exchanged some emails with them some years ago (around March 2000), asking for information to develop alsa drivers, but they offered to sell a Driver Development Kit to us ("it usually runs several tens of thousands of dollars") - and there was a thread about them in alsa-devel as well at that time[*]. -- Fernando Also: http://www.alsa-project.org/call.php [*] for example, google for "I would try to open personal dialogue with engineers" and hit the google cache (I can't get to geocrawler). There were more interesting and pertinent posts in that thread.

On Thu, 2004-12-02 at 03:49, Paul Davis wrote: Have you read all msgs? Because i did. 80% of those were. The former CEO of Xiph, Emmett Plant went pretty rough on them. That said, i think it's a waste of time to argue about whether to be polite or not and teach morals to each other. Let's respect each others attitude. I bought a fireface, feel angry and the only thing that comes to mind is FY. You and others haven't bought one although you mihgt want in the future and think it's better to say 'Please could you relaese/reconsider etc' I don't think that works, but it's my opinion. Whether or not, the point is... If 50 persons say "Please would you be so kind ..." And another 50 say FY, in the end it's the number that counts. 100 (potential) customers. Each one of use is responsioble for his *own* statements. In such cases it's important to take *action*. Paul, let's be honest. IIRC 4 years ago, it was almost impossible to compile ardour, there was no non-desctructive, non-linear editing present, no jack(perhaps its forerunner called audioengine), no peakcache and such. Today ardour even handles latency compensation of plugins(AFAIK available for the first time in PT 6.3!). Not that ardour is finished *but*... That said, it would be stupid to demo ardour at a trade show 4 years ago. It definitely would *not* be stupid to do so now. Let me guess. They have to deface their units in order to sell a few of them with steinberg software while they're not the only ones doing so(i.e. there are more such companies providing "steinberg" hardware ready to be bundled with steinberg sw products)? And the result? Nuendo - ~1200Euro Fireface ~1300Euro Digi002+ProTools - ~1200Euro. What would you buy if you had a mac? Oh and btw, we talked to Mr. Carstens at the musikmesse this year, me and Benno. Basically he was *yawning* while listening to our arguments. You're unwillingly or even unknowingly accusing ALSA of being a cause for hardware rip-offs. Note, there are 15(!) products listed in alsa matrix as supported. Did this happen *once*? Let me reiterate. 1. the audio market is about to be flooded with firewire interfaces (presonus, mackie, apogee, maudio, echo, TC, edirol, digidesign, motu, terratec, metric halo, egosys, tascam.... ) and they will all deliver outstanding performance (at least that's what they claim ;) Note that RME has dominated the linux audio market for pro audio hw along with a lot cheaper maudio alternatives. 2. *All* of the companies listed above in brackets have hired very skilled people to do the job and as a result each and every product will talk to the pc in a different way, each will cripple OHCI or whatever protocol in a different way in order to achieve better results, and each will introduce different problems to its users. In an ideal world, with everything opensourced, they would all just work together on a audio-over-ieee1394 standard, achieving much better results. That said, it's not and will *never* be understandable to me. Never. See above. I think it's time to open our eyes. Not to mention that the number of sold rme and maudio units could be a few hundreds by now, in return for 3 donated units. And paying customers who will gladly pay more for higher quality. Same technology as in? 24/192? 3ms unguaranteed latency? Let's compare that with an automobile ;) Say you've got 2 cars which offer the same convenience and power. One of them is say Daewoo for a pretty low price(no doubt it's good quality) and one of them is Mercedes for 6x as much $ or more. Who will sell more? You'd be surprised. Talking about jing jang. In the digital world it all comes down to true/false. So it's not as simple as 'not as simple as' ;) So right now, it seems that you can forget about dealer pricing with respect to the future. And if i were them, i'd surely provide you with those cards you've purchased. Be sure about that. It's what i call decorum. Marek

On Thu, 2004-12-02 at 13:52, Thomas Grill wrote: That's exactly what i was trying to avoid. Next time you offend someone better read the post you're repliying to.

On Wed, 2004-12-01 at 19:48, Paul Davis wrote: You know where I stand on this one. There is one thing that Marek brought up that might be interesting - audioscience. Maybe they'll take a look at what we need. Jan

On Wed, 2004-01-12 at 17:29 -0600, Jan Depner wrote: I'm not being overly pessimistic, you just havn't put an ounce of thought into the problem at all. And anyway, Linux has already been somewhat "destroyed" in a way, since it's (apparently) impossible to have a completely open source system with modern 3D acceleration. What's next? video cards? network cards? chipsets? sound cards? the entire computer? How about sounds cards.. maybe this trend will catch on and there won't be any professional quality sound cards available that work in Linux at all.. then Linux is completely useless as an audio platform. Sounds pretty destroyed to me. If things keep going the way you seem to think is perfectly fine, the whole damn kernel will be proprietary. I've said it before and I'll say it again - we already have a totally closed, single architechture, buggy POS operating system. Why must you advocate turning Linux into one too? In a couple years, when those 200 linux systems are absolutely useless because Nvidia doesn't care about you anymore, maybe then you'll learn. When (not if) that happens, and you have a pile of video cards you probably payed over $4000 for that are good for absolutely nothing, fire me an email and let me know what you think of proprietary drivers. Of course, if it was to happen soon and your employer loses a couple thousand dollars because of your choice, I guess you'll have more important things to worry about than continuing this conversation - like, say, finding a new job. -DR-

On Thu, 2004-02-12 at 09:14 -0600, Jan Depner wrote: I'd rather not have to put "in practise" at the end of every sentence in my email, assuming any even remotely intelligent person (such as yourself) would be able to figure out what I mean without a 400 word explanatory paragraph. A free operating system isn't very useful if you can't run it. How can you be so sure? What makes you think Linux will become more popular? If everything starts going proprietary it will have all the same problems as Windows (architechture specific, vendor lock-in, no way to fix problems, at the mercy of some other company, etc). In which case a lot of the reasons for using Linux in the first place are gone, and it's popularity will fade accordingly. And in 5 years those computers will be capable of doing the same things they are now. Are they useless now? No. Then they won't be useless in 5 years. Not all of us have infinite resources of money to buy shiny new computers for every task. I don't want to spend $3000 for a gateway when I already have a machine that is (far) more than adequate for the job. My computer right now can record a whole lot of tracks simultaneously in realtime. That's a pretty useful task, and a better computer isn't needed for it.. I don't recall recording a session with 38,000,000 musicians, and I'd say it's a pretty safe bet I won't ever have to. "Obsolete" is a useless term in this context. -DR-

Alfons Adriaensen &lt;fons.adriaensen(a)alcatel.be&gt; writes: Now, you're twisting everything to fit a twisted view. Software is changed much more often than hardware. I'm using linux-2.6.9 with glibc-2.3.4-20040828 on a p3-600 with 384Mio RAM. It's my main computer. I also got linux-2.6.9 on my 5 other computers (down to 300MHz). I'm not buying a new computer before I can buy a GPU that is supported with libre software drivers. (unless I get my friends old computers). -- Esben Stien is b0ef(a)esben-stien.name http://www.esben-stien.name irc://irc.esben-stien.name/%23contact [sip|iax]:b0ef@esben-stien.name

On Thu, 2004-12-02 at 21:02, Fons Adriaensen wrote: which in case of an opensource driver would be to change a code here and there to make it work... Paul, Jan, Fons, and others. I believe that you should switch your software to proprietary and make a living out of it. Because in that case your reasoning would be perfectly valid. Marek

On Thu, 2004-12-02 at 23:47, Dave Robillard wrote: Me too. But it seems as if they wouldn't do themselves. That was my point. I think that at some point it has become disrespectful for companies to ignore linux. So i can't really understand people(oss users or even oss developers) who try to defend the position of companies that make their lives harder for no reason. I'm just trying to point out that they should be more proud of their work which if wasn't oss, could be: 1. a well marketed proprietary money-machine 2. valuable IP, treated as tradesecret and protected under the terms of business law and IP law. So it would be the same thing basically. And i really tried to clarify why there should be no fear in providing opensource drivers, providing a brief analysis and concrete examples. Seems that i completely failed in what i was trying to achieve. Better luck next time. ;) I'd give it one more chance and post a 'rme - take action' letter to lad and lau which would encourage people to go to the rme forum, tell them that their using their hw, what kind of hw they have purchased and that they would continue to do so in the future. But i fear that a lot of people would just ignore it, thinking to themselves 'my vote doesn't count, they will ignore it anyway, it's a waste of time, there's just 5 of us' or similar. I might be wrong. If somebody wants to encourage me in doing this i'd be glad to do it. I'd also encourage to write polite letters if that's what suits the majority here ;) If we'd achieve a fairly large number - say 100, the consequences would be either: - RME reconsidering their decision - raising interest of all the RME customers in linux audio, because virtually everyone there is able to try it out on a "professional level". Except the fireface users(minority still, since it's a new device). which if successful, would most likely bring RME to reconsider their postion anyway. Which seems that it should be in our interest to do so. It's not much effort anyway. If not, tell me, and i'll shut up. ;) Marek

I am one. Your opinion. Mine is - depends. In this case...not. For various reasons. You'd be surprised. I could tell the same to you. Marek

That would be me. That would be the companies that impose their proprietary standards on me. Forget it. Marek

On Fri, 2004-12-03 at 10:57, Dave Robillard wrote: Excuse me Dave. Exactly what personal attack are you talking about? You called those of us who stated that we would rather have a closed driver than no driver ignorant. I merely asked you to behave in a professional manner. Please don't put words into my mouth. Jan

On Fri, 2004-12-03 at 19:58, Dave Robillard wrote: I didn't call you obnoxious. I asked you to stop being obnoxious. A fine difference I admit but a difference anyway. You *did* insult a number of people by calling their ideas ignorant so, in my book, you started the personal attacks. Yours were just blanket personal attacks. I asked you to stop. Now, on to more important things. I agree with almost everything else you've said in this post and I think it's the right direction to go in. The one thing I disagree with is that we *all* care about personal freedom. It's just that some of us are a bit more pragmatic about it. We do have to live in the real world after all. This is probably the best option. I think you could also point out that the Linux community as a whole is interested in finding a vendor that they can trust and work with. A vendor that works with us on an open basis would probably engender a hell of a lot of customer loyalty (along the lines of Mac users ;-) The only negative is that it's hard to fight inertia. Getting enough people to do this could be tricky. Agreed. The only good point is that it's much easier to get people to sign an online petition than sending individual letters. As long as we keep it respectable. Jan

On Sat, 2004-04-12 at 09:18 -0600, Jan Depner wrote: As I have already explained in detail, I called the _opinion_ ignorant because it fails to take into consideration numerous factors involved (actually every factor except "duh, I want card to work"). That is MY PERSONAL OPINION of that idea. Frankly, it's not my problem if people find my opinion insulting. And even if they do it's hardly a valid reason to not express an opinion. Every opinion insults someone out there. It is irrelevant. So in summary, I don't like your opinion, and you don't like mine. Good, great, grand, who cares. Agreed. <end previous pointless discussion> I said the exact same thing, thus we are in agreement. Yay. Enough right now would be tricky, yes. But in time, the effect would definitely be significant. I personally think Linux Audio will become a pretty important thing in time (at least on par with Windows anyway, which noone even takes seriously as an audio platform yet a lot of audio companies care about it a whooole lot). If Linux becomes tempting as an audio platform, when newbs go to switch and the entire community says "<companyX> is by far your best option for an audio interface" because we get along with said company, it can only be a good thing. Already Linux CDs are being shipped with more mainstread not-linux-specific music magazines - it's happening already. That's what we need to make RME understand. They used to be <companyX>. They aren't any more. Well, seems Marek is already doing the forum thing, so maybe that's the best option? The public-ness of it is a plus anyway. -DR-

On Sat, 2004-04-12 at 14:37 -0700, Doug Wellington wrote: See, now THAT was a valid, non-troll message... your first of the thread as it happens. You're learning! -DR-

IIUC ideal world means an opensourced world? If so it's simple. Spread the word. Not hard, and that's what people usually do. Take ffii.org as an example. You not only can but should request it if you care, they are free to act as they like. And bare the consequences. Marek

On Fri, 2004-12-03 at 19:15, Doug Wellington wrote: I think Dave was trying to point out something different. Besides, it's not a personal attack with regards to RME, simply because RME is a legal entity. :) Could you give me one option for 10 analog i/os of 24/192, firewire? I'm a linux user. :) Marek

On Fri, 2004-03-12 at 11:15 -0700, Doug Wellington wrote: I'm not even going to justify that with a response - you're putting so many words into my mouth it's ridiculous. If anyone says anything defending RME, I said it's a personal attack (again myself)? Are you serious? Anyway, read the email you're replying to again, note it's purpose, and decide if replying as you did was really a good idea. Enough. Please. What is my other option for an 'open source friendly' firewire interface with the capabilities of the fireface exactly? I sure would love to know (seriously). If there was an equally capable open alternative I'd be the first to go buy it and send RME an email telling them why I did so. Done it before, and I'll do it again. The question is not "why limit yourself". I am not limiting myself. RME is limiting me. (In a way. Don't go there) -DR-

I thought you were just bitching because RME didn't give you something you wanted and you were trying to rally the LAD troops to create a big stink to try to get RME to give it to you... ;-) No it was me. Watch your words. You're starting to be pretty rude and offensive.

<delurk> Most of you don't know me, I'm sure, but I've been working with various forms of Unix since the 80's. I work as a system adminstrator during the day, where I deal with about 500 computers of various types, from Linux to Solaris to Tru64 to VMS and, yes, Windows. I'm also a programmer, maintaining various userland applications as well as developing device drivers for the Ensoniq EDS-1000 (PARIS) audio processing card. I'm a big believer in freedom of choice - choose the right tool for the right job. I also believe in accountability - I don't mind paying for something if it means I get some form of customer service in return. I judge people and companies not just by the initial product they create, but also by how they deal with problems associated with that product. I also judge people by their reaction to problems I have in my own work - are they understanding of me as a human being or do they get upset with me when I don't meet their standards (which may or may not be my own standards)? With that said, one comment has inspired me to don my asbestos and respond to this thread: There is a reason that many "self-help" and "management" books say that you have to *earn* respect. People aren't going to do what you want if you beat them up about it. Look at history - think about how many people were persecuted for "ignoring" Christianity. (I'm not picking on Christianity only, you can substitute many other subjects in that line.) Did that persecution really make people into good/better Christians? The ironic thing to me is that I think the Christian message was a good one and could stand on its own without that persecution. (Simplistic version: would Jesus have persecuted anyone?) Similarly, I think the Linux "message" is a good one... But it's OK for you to make those companies' lives harder? I seriously doubt that there is "no reason" on their part - my guess is that everyone has a different position and not everyone understands (or wants to understand?) everyone else's reasons... I don't know where you live, but here in the States, I don't remember being *forced* to buy any particular thing - I get to choose whatever I want to purchase. Now, I've found a lot of companies that are making a lot of products that don't exactly fit my personal needs, but I don't feel like I've found any company that is purposefully picking on me or trying to make my life harder. (Heehee, remember, we're talking companies here, not government organizations!) ;-) Seems to me if I was to take the time to contact the companies that aren't making products I need and berate them for it, I would be wasting a lot of my life... -Doug

Previously: So, did they, or did they not, stop sharing the information they were sharing previously? We have a lot of discussions here in the States about "entitlements". (In my estimation, one of the defining characteristics of being a democrat vs. being a republican.) Because someone provided something in the past (and still provides it), does that mean you are automatically entitled to something else similar from them in the future...? You can't see any similarities??? Oh my... It's hard for me to do anything besides see the comparison - it's called "moral righteousness". Think about it for a bit, and if you just can't imagine any similarities at all, send me a private email and I'll give you some ideas. OK, one hint - imagine, if only just for a second, that for this comparison "non-Christian" roughly equates to "non-Linux-user" and that "Christian clergy" roughly equates to "Linux evangelist". (Oh, and feel free to substitute "open source" for "Linux" in that phrase...) It is my personal belief that people who hide behind the shield of moral righteousness are the most close-minded people of all... As I deeply feel for the RME folks who are being persecuted for this... -Doug

On Friday 03 December 2004 14:44, Doug Wellington wrote: ;-) Seems to me if I was to take the time to I think the whole thread got started by the fact that Marek needs the product, or feels that he needs it. That he went and bought assuming a linux driver would appear is maybe naive, but the crucial point is that there are some product that have no alternatives and linux, let alone oss drivers. In this case it is AFAIK the only firewire800 interface on the market, up to 3 units can be daisy chained, maintaining sample sync for a staggering number of channels (60 channels of 96KHz 24 bit, 84 if you drop down to 48KHz.) etc..,etc... very nice. Of course this is also exactly the reason RME doesn't want to release an oss driver. They get this preformance by doing something really clever and they want to corner some part of some market. A real conundrum And this will get worse IMHO. The oss advocates seem to insist on a separation between soft- and hardware that is becoming more and more vague. I wonder if it is even economically feasible to make small production runs when you put all your custom stuff in custom chips instead of in the driver and using off the shelf components. And what is the difference between a closed-source library/driver and a some custom chips without blueprints/specs? Does anyone here run a computer where they full access to all the bios/northbridge/southbridge specs and code? Anyway being forced to choose your OS based on the hardware you buy, is like being forced to choose your fuel based on the type of car you have :) (or is it picking your bike based on the food you eat) Anyway, another post in this usenetlike thread. When is hitler coming up? lets make programs or sound. Gerard

On Fri, 2004-03-12 at 17:18 +0000, vanDongen/Gilcher wrote: One can run on a 100% free /software/ system, such as Debian, one can not. The numerous problems that arise from having proprietary code in the Linux kernel exist for one, not for the other. -DR-

for the hdsp series, RME had *no* written documentation at all except their existing driver source code. i have come across other h/w devices where there is no documentation. RME is basically a 2 person shop on the technical side of things - a h/w guy and a s/w guy who sit in the same room and go back and forth on "how does this ...", "why doesn't this ...", "this seems not to ..." etc.

Previously: EXACTLY MY POINT - you don't seem to want to understand their reason(s)... I think it's you who are putting the artificial restrictions on things... ;-) -Doug

Previously: "In group privilege"? -Doug

On Fri, 2004-12-03 at 17:42, Dave Robillard wrote: Ok :) A few questions before i proceed. I think i should mention where to reach their forum and what sw is available to conveniently reach it(i use pan, does anybody recommend something else?) About the subject: not sure whether to use all uppercase or not. I'd use uppercase in order to make people more aware but not sure anyway. The subject would be "TAKE ACTION - RME customers please read" or something like that. The rule would be to agree on the subject under which the thread would run on their forum, something like "Linux, ALSA, RME support". Everybody would find this thread and post: 1. his/her RME hardware 2. if (s)he's not a customer yet and considering, mentioning that (s)he's doing so 3. whether he/she was satisfied with their hw and ALSA support or not comments? Marek

On Sat, Dec 04, 2004 at 02:23:46PM +0100, martin rumori wrote: +1 +1 -- Paul Winkler http://www.slinkp.com

On Thu, 2004-02-12 at 21:02 +0100, Fons Adriaensen wrote: [snip] Exactly, *you* should have the ability to actually find that solution for *your* system. Proprietary drivers take this ability away from you, so in that situation.. *you* are screwed. Nobody ever said the manufacturer should be responsible for supporting any and all new configurations - that's riduclous. The entire point is they /shouldn't/ be responsible, so people aren't at their mercy. ATI is almost certainly not going to write a driver for my Radeon for whatever incarnation of X we're using in 5 years. Will it work however? Absolutely. It's essentially a guarantee, given the ease of converting the existing (XFree) driver to other frameworks. Sounds like you've switched sides, Fons. -DR-

Am i the only one that thinks maybe this should come to an end at some point? How about those who would like to get a firewire interface contribute cash to the group of wonderful LAD designers/ElecEng types keen on making the ultimate open firewire interface and we can all be contented with open drivers and hardware and actually get back to making some music? Maybe when it is designed you can suggest to audioscience that they can make it? They get all the basic design done for them, and a new and exciting product, everyone gets to buy a firewire interface that works and everyone is happy. Eyes seem to be focused on firewire now, we still have probs with usb, well at least my griffin imic and some others don't do full duplex with alsa&jack(only oss&jack). I really would like some slightly more musically related discussion on here, i.e what synth are missing, what features need to be developed so x can make y easier with z, etc. Quite often i just love a synth that does a simple job and does it well, ie a TB303(maybedevilfish mod ;p) emulation, a decent drum synth (coming very, very soon), etc and just getting together and making some tunes would be great. (for instance http://wrstud.urz.uni-wuppertal.de/~ka0394/en/loop_soup/) I think sometimes we seem to miss the point of actually making music with this stuff... Loki --------- Strike another match, go start anew And it's all over now, Baby Blue.

Paul Davis &lt;paul(a)linuxaudiosystems.com&gt; wrote: Yeah, true! ;-) i just mean that sometime the coding seems some what removed from the final point, i.e ahh, a new lib, a new feature, etc, but not focused towards how this can be applied to actually making music, how it will sound better. No one here chats about developing a really nice sounding bassline synth such as a tb303 devilfish mod or borg. Lots of people think seem to think these simple problems arn't worth exploring and go on to another general synthesis language or something... probably just venting here! Though the recent DSSI plugins seem to be helping this a lot. This might just be a somewhat frustrated house/prog/breaks fan somewhat jeleous of his friends with lot of hardware. The lack of RT drum synth will soon be fixed! ;-) Loki

On Tue, Nov 30, 2004 at 05:32:30PM -0500, Dave Robillard wrote: I will follow you reasoning up to a point. Suppose we have a card X with a closed source driver. You will not use it. Now we make a new card Y, which is actually an X with the functionality of the driver pushed into the (closed source) firmware. We make a third card Z with the same functionality pushed inside the hardware. Will you use Y ? Will you use Z ? If the answer to either is yes, what is the essential difference ? -- FA

On Wed, 2004-01-12 at 03:38 +0100, Marek Peteraj wrote: This is a very good point I forgot to mention. I sincerely hope Nvidia drops all linux support some time in the future. It's the only way some people will learn. -DR-

On Thu, 2004-12-02 at 00:13, Dave Robillard wrote: Seems like there's no other chance. Sigh. The problem is that people are reluctant to give up some of their artificial (or bogus, from the manufacturers perspective) convenience in order to gain a lot more of true, genuine oss convenience in the future. Marek

On Tue, 2004-11-30 at 15:09, Fons Adriaensen wrote: It depends on how Y and Z interact with the kernel itself. There has to be some sort of driver that will handle the card. If that driver is kept open then I would use Y or Z, no problem (I'm already doing that with any card that has firmware in it, whether I'm aware of it or not). If that interaction is closed source I would try hard to use neither because the kernel internals will change over time, and at some point I will end up with hardware that has a non-working driver and no way to fix it. Nvidia tries to do that with their closed source drivers which have a pure binary and some glue source code you have to build for each kernel. Even then the approach sometimes fail, as when Fedora started shipping kernels using 4K internal stacks and the driver stopped working. -- Fernando

On Tue, 2004-11-30 at 16:32, Dave Robillard wrote: Jeez Dave, think you could insult some more people? I won't purchase a firewire device from RME because it's not supported at all. On the other hand I will continue to recommend buying NVIDIA video cards at work for our Linux systems because there is no alternative. I have to have 3D acceleration and there is no other choice. Would you rather I stopped supporting Linux (drop a couple of hundred Linux systems) where I work and just let them all use Windoze? This may be a religion for you and Marek but it's not for me. Just as I don't appreciate having some one bang on my door and tell that I should believe what they believe I don't like it much in print either. Your point of view has been heard, you don't need to be obnoxious about it. Jan

On Wed, 2004-12-01 at 17:07, Dave Robillard wrote: I wasn't advocating proprietary drivers. I just happen to agree with Lee and many others. I'll take proprietary until someone else writes an open source driver for NVIDIA that is as fast as the closed source one. I have no choice. I am an open source developer (not just audio either). I've been using Linux since 0.99. I care about Linux. I've been through every OS there is starting in the early 70s with the dreaded OS-360. I don't want to go back to 15 different UNIX operating systems. Also, you must not have read my post very well - I said your point had been heard, not that you had no right to your opinion. I also asked you to not be so obstreperous in your posts. You'll get more respect and attention by being polite. Jan

That's the word of the day. Tomorrow we'll try obsequious ;-) Jan On Wed, 2004-12-01 at 18:18, Fons Adriaensen wrote:

Fons Adriaensen &lt;fons.adriaensen(a)skynet.be&gt; writes: Obstreperous \Ob*strep"er*ous\, a. [L. obstreperus, from obstrepere to make a noise at; ob (see {Ob-}) + strepere to make a noise.] Attended by, or making, a loud and tumultuous noise; clamorous; noisy; vociferous. ``The obstreperous city.'' --Wordsworth. ``Obstreperous approbation.'' --Addison. Beating the air with their obstreperous beaks. --B. Jonson. -- {Ob*strep"er*ous*ly}, adv. -- {Ob*strep"er*ous*ness}, n. -- CYa, Mario

Jan, i think Daves posts were pretty ok in that respect and pretty much hit the nail on the head. Talking about teaching morals - i think our egos can handle more than that. ;) Besides, your recent post about vegetarians vs. meateaters could offend me as a vegetarian too. I just took it easy but i know many vegetarians that hate this and consider that as an offense: http://eca.cx/lau/2004/11/0944.html http://eca.cx/lau/2004/11/0947.html ;) Marek

On Wed, 2004-12-01 at 20:37, Marek Peteraj wrote: LOL. Good point ;-) Jan

That was a joke Marek. That's why it had the little smiley thingy on the end ;-) As opposed to Dave's talking about people's ignorant ideas. Jan On Wed, 2004-12-01 at 20:27, Marek Peteraj wrote:

On Thu, 2004-12-02 at 00:15, Dave Robillard wrote: I did say why. I just expect people to behave in a professional manner. If you're not capable of that then I'll quit discussing things with you. Jan

Saying nothing is *never* helpful. Showing your dissatisfaction at least *sometimes* helps. We'll see. Marek

On Tue, 2004-11-30 at 01:27, Fernando Lopez-Lezcano wrote: Perhaps you should :) I think i clarified it in my previous posts. What you're talking about is a different relationship. We're talking about a vendor vs. customer relationship in which case if the number of unsatisfied customers bi@#$^ng about your product grows, you have to take adequate action no matter how much they're hurting your ego. Becasue sometimes there *might* be a valid reason for that. ;) That said i think it's silly to argue about that here. We have lost two main specs providers. Not because of hatefilled posts. That was the consequence. In my eyes a very valid one. In your case perhaps not. But it's for the interest of *everyone* here. So i think the more of us agree the more strength we can show to everybody out there, instead of arguing whether to beg or be more proud(no offense, my POV). Marek

On Tue, Nov 30, 2004 at 04:49:26AM +0100, Marek Peteraj wrote: I have read the entire thread on the RME forum, and I really don't think it is in our interest at all. You don't show strength by losing your temper. Like Nando's cats would do, it's much more effective to turn your back and walk away. -- FA

On Tue, 2004-11-30 at 12:10, Alfons Adriaensen wrote: Famous last words - i got a mails from a few people interested in trying out linux audio since then. Virtually every RME customer on their forum is now more aware of linux audio and able to try it out(except fireface users). It seems like i've lost the game here but only time will tell. I'm getting tired of convincing people(even authors themselves). Marek

On Sun, 2004-11-28 at 10:42 +0100, Thomas Grill wrote: I have not read the RME forum. Has RME commented on the possibility of a closed source driver? Lee