[Consortium] Wider scope for linuxaudio.org: home audio

[Andreas Kuckartz]

Daniel James wrote:

> Do you think there are any specific projects that should be members of
> linuxaudio.org in order to better address the 'home audio' market? We
> already have members working in relevant areas, including ALSA,
> Gstreamer, MandrakeSoft and Xiph.org. An embedded system developer,
> maybe?

Home audio is not included in this phrase of the "About"-text: "emphasis on
professional tools for the music, recording and broadcast industries." My
suggestion is to explicitely add "home audio" to this list. As far as I see it
one of the main issues in digital home audio is to promote the use and
development of open standards which are useable for Linux- and Open Source-based
home audio systems. A standard is not really open if you have to pay thousands
of Dollars to be able to read and use it or if a company can
"embrace-and-extend" it to monopolise it's position.

I think that quite a few of the companies which could be interested can be found
on these two lists:

Members of the UPnP Forum
http://upnp.org/membership/members.asp

Members of the "Digital Living Network Alliance"
http://www.dlna.org/about/roster

The list of UPnP Forum members is especially broad because there are no
membership fees (membership in the DLNA costs a lot).

Companies like AMD, BridgeCo or Transmeta could be asked. Also quite a few
consumer electronics-companies (such as Phillips or Samsung) for obvious reasons
are not happy with the current dominance of Microsoft in home audio and video.
That is why they created their own organisation:

Universal Home API
http://www.uhapi.org/home

Those companies are not on any of these lists:

Slim Devices
(not using Linux in their current devices but has grown an Open Source community
around their SlimServer software - which is implemented in Perl. They might be
interested in closer connections to the Linux Audio community)
http://slimdevices.com

Sonos
(using Linux in their devices)
http://www.sonos.com

PONTIS digital entertainment
(using Linux in their MediaServer MS300)
http://pontis.de/site_e/home_e.htm

Cheers,
Andreas