OpenSound - was Re: lockmgr patch

[Hasso Tepper]

Matthew Dillon wrote:
> :Before we go too far with these fixes, would investing the effort in
> :OpenSound be better?
> :
> :http://developer.opensound.com/
> :
> :Anecdotally, it has more supported devices and cleaner code.  I thought
> :the sound code in FreeBSD was based off an older version of this.
> 
>     Well, we still need the lockmgr changes for the release, because
>     we can't have it panicing.  If someone wants to do a fresh port
>     of OpenSound that sounds great to me!  But we != me, my plate is full.

Me neither, regardless of interest in the area. I'm also a bit sceptical
regarding claims "it's superior" - I haven't seen anything but 4Front
marketing materials backing this. API might be cleaner, but for example
hda in FreeBSD supports more hardware/features than OpenSound driver and
I don't see envy24 driver at all in released sources.

I'm also a bit sceptical about future of OpenSound. I don't think that
OpenSound is relevant any more in Linux, they have alsa which _is_
superior than OSS. It's also clear that 4Front has intention to move
development into community (see "Possible projects for contributors"
http://developer.opensound.com/opensource_oss/). Will it work at all?
We (DragonFly) don't have resources (yet) to maintain sound drivers, so
we have to rely on community regarding this.

So, I wouldn't rush to make decisions regarding this.


-- 
Hasso Tepper