I'm not a developer, just interested in Linux audio development because I use Linux audio software almost daily, and as such I've been lurking on this list for awhile. So this is just a practical suggestion / brainstorming idea, not meant to incur flames (I wish I could heat my studio by the flames this list generates). One complaint I've seen raised a number of times is that in the world of Linux, especially the audio realm, there are too many choices and not enough decisions made. In the wider scope, The Linux Foundation is trying to address this by maintaining a standards base to help promote open standards across mainstream distros... So here's the idea: why not make one of the responsibilities of the Linux Audio Consortium be establishing and maintaining a standards base? As far as I can tell from http://linuxaudio.org/about , it's not currently one of the Consortium's roles. I.e., there could be a formal document that says in a nutshell, "If you want your Linux audio application to integrate seamlessly on most audio-centric distros, here's what it should support. And, if you want your pro-audio-centric distro to be seamlessly compatible with all these great apps, here's what it should include and how it should work." Of course it would be a voluntary standards base, and every developer / distro team can still do whatever they like, so that innovation can continue... but as protocols/interfaces/frameworks/whatever are developed and show their merit, they can be included in the standards base, and old/deprecated/redundant things removed, so that people aren't wasting their time supporting old code. So to sum it up, *someone* needs to make some tough decisions, or Linux audio will continue to stagnate... why not the Consortium? It's the only real Linux audio "authority" or central point of contact that I know of. I'm sure there are many reasons this is a silly idea -- lack of time, disagreements on what should be standardized, etc. -- but as I said it's just an idea. I'd love some constructive criticism, even if it just leads to a completely different idea getting implemented. By the way, I apologize that this is basically just another "here's my idea about what everyone else should do" kind of e-mails. I could maintain a website and/or provide free hosting for the standards document(s), if need be. -Sean Corbett blacktownsound.com (<- pardon the shameless spam)