Hi folks, Now it has happened. Open Sound System is finally open sourced. Source downloads are available from http://developer.opensound.com/sources The actual announcement follows. Best regards, Hannu ------------------------------------------------------------------ FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 4FRONT TECHNOLOGIES RELEASES THE SOURCE CODE FOR OPEN SOUND SYSTEM CULVER CITY, CA, June 14, 2007: 4Front Technologies is proud to announce the release of the source code to Open Sound System (OSS) v4.0. The software currently runs on Linux, Solaris™, SCO UnixWare™ and FreeBSD platforms. OSS is a cross platform API that provides drivers for most consumer and professional audio devices for UNIX® and POSIX based operating systems, including Linux. Owing to its open architecture, applications developed on one supporting operating system platform can be easily recompiled on any other platform. Licensing Models: Open Sound System source code is now available under 3 licenses: · GNU Public License (GPL) version 2 · Common Development and Distribution License (CDDL) for all operating systems that have full source code available under the BSD or CDDL licenses. · 4Front’s commercial license for using Open Sound incompatible with open source licenses listed above. Commercial licenses are also available for entities not wishing to use Open Sound System under any of the above open source licenses What is being open sourced? The source code includes drivers for most consumer PCI and USB audio devices and operating system support, including binary package generation and sample test programs. Complete documentation and API specification is also being made available to the open source community. A device driver kit (DDK) is also available for developers to implement cross platform device drivers for audio hardware. This eliminates lot of redundant work that has traditionally been required to support any hardware under multiple Unix/POSIX operating systems. Reasons for going Open Source: OSS has been an open API specification with multiple implementations by independent developer communities. This has caused problems for application designers because there are minor differences between the implementations. The new open source community development model makes it possible to replace the obsolete and incompatible vendor specific sound subsystems and OSS implementations with a state-of-the-art implementation developed by 4Front Technologies. The goal has always been to standardize audio under POSIX compliant systems and this includes real time operating systems and embedded systems as well. "We are open sourcing OSS because this provides a great opportunity for different communities to work together to provide wider audio hardware support for all operating systems." said Hannu Savolainen, CTO and chief architect of Open Sound System. Industry Reaction: "It's great to see 4Front releasing OSS under the Common Development and Distribution License (CDDL). It's something the OpenSolaris™community welcomes, and it provides an opportunity to improve sound support for all OpenSolaris™ distributions," says Stephen Lau, OpenSolaris™ board member. "Fluendo is excited to see the open source release of 4Front Technologies advanced OSS implementation for UNIX® and Linux. Getting a unified and advanced sound system across all major UNIX® and Linux variants will be a big advantage for developers. We look forward to working together with 4Front Technologies to make sure the GStreamer multimedia framework and the Open Sound System integrates perfectly with each other", says Fluendo Business Development Manager Christian F.K. Schaller. "With a long history of successful collaboration with 4Front, Creative looks forward to working with the Open Sound System community in ensuring that Creative Sound Blaster Live! and Sound Blaster Audigy sound cards have stable and well-supported drivers on Linux, Solaris and BSD. The open source release of Open Sound certainly helps our goal in providing cross-platform support for our products," said George Thorn, director of digital media relations for Creative Labs. Community Portal A new web site with source code, API specs and forums for the developer community has been opened at http://developer.opensound.com <http://developer.opensound.com/>. For more information and to download the binary distributions of Open Sound System, visit 4Front's WWW site at http://www.opensound.com <http://www.opensound.com/>. --- xxx --- All trademarks and copyrights belong to their respective owners. UNIX is a registered trademark in the United States and other countries, exclusively licensed through X/Open Company, Ltd. Sun, Solaris, OpenSolaris, Sun Microsystems and The Network Is The Computer are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc. in the United States and other countries. Open Sound System is a trademark of 4Front Technologies. Copyright (C) 1996-2007, 4Front Technologies, All Rights Reserved. Contact: Dev Mazumdar 4Front Technologies 4035 Lafayette Place, Unit F Culver City, CA 90232 USA. Tel: (310) 202 8530 E-mail: info(a)opensound.com <mailto:info@opensound.com> Fax: (310) 202 0486 Web: http://www.opensound.com <http://www.opensound.com/>