10 Jun
2006
10 Jun
'06
12:10 a.m.
On Friday 09 June 2006 15:13, Lee Revell wrote:
On Fri, 2006-06-09 at 20:55 +0200, Alberto Botti
wrote:
So a company that wanted to have a proprietary connection to linux could
write an open source blob and a closed connection to the blob for their
closed hardware/software? ie linux remains useable for companies.
If not, I'm having a hard time seeing this as a positive situation.
More like alsa shooting themselves in the foot.
I'm not a programmer or audio pro; just a linux user who advocates open
source and avenues of co-existence with businesses.
Marv
Il giorno mer, 07/06/2006 alle 11.49 -0400, Lee
Revell ha scritto:
"Works with ALSA" is not exactly the same as a binary ALSA driver.
"Binary-only drivers cannot be based on any ALSA source code. They
must be written from scratch. Binary-only drivers that contain ALSA
code are infringing on copyright laws."
IOW, a binary only ALSA driver can implement the ALSA API, but it
cannot use the ALSA kernel middle layer at all.
AFAICT this means that you could implement a ALSA compatibility
wrapper around a binary blob as long as that blob was not developed
for use on Linux. But developing a binary driver for use on Linux is
clearly a derived work of the kernel and thus illegal.
Lee On Wed, 2006-06-07 at 04:50 -0500, Jan Depner
wrote:
(http://www.alsa-project.org/call.php):
"There is nothing to stop any company from developing a binary only
driver that works with ALSA. But there are several issues and
requirements we want to make clear to anybody attempting to do
this." Why do you assume this? There are plenty of
closed-source
applications and drivers running on top of Linux.
Closed source applications are perfectly OK. A closed source
ALSA driver violates the GPL.
From the ALSA soundcard support page