OSNews: http://www.osnews.com/story/19128/OSS_4_0_Released_Under_BSD_Lisence Exploring the Future of Computing en-us Copyright 2001-2009, David Adams adam+nospam@osnews.com Tue, 07 Jul 2009 00:15:04 GMT http://www.osnews.com/images/osnews.gif OSNews.com http://www.osnews.com Woohoo http://osnews.com/thread?294994 http://osnews.com/thread?294994 This *is* good news. Go 4Front!

Not to sound like a fanboy, but OSS just is the standard for sound under any unix (or unix clone). I hope Linux ditches ALSA for this. The reasons I prefer OSS over ALSA are mostly practical: OSS is *the* cross-platform standard API that everyone knows and implements (as standard as BSD sockets almost, but then for sound), and the documentation is way (and I mean way) better than ALSA's.

Thank you 4Front!Edited 2008-01-08 23:55 Tue, 08 Jan 2008 23:54:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (coolvibe) Comments RE: Woohoo http://osnews.com/thread?295009 http://osnews.com/thread?295009 I Have to second that, although you should take my opinion with a ton of salt, since i know pretty much nothing about the implementation details of both.

I would just like to see an unified system under which every *nix system could be programmed for sound without too much hassle.


Way to go! Wed, 09 Jan 2008 00:42:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (AlexandreAM) Comments Good move for Unix, bad move for 4Front. http://osnews.com/thread?295014 http://osnews.com/thread?295014 The GPL and CDDL rather limited the comercial, proprietary use that could be made of OSS by parties outside 4Front. Now with a release under the BSD license, 4Front have esentially given away the ability to use OSS in closed-source products, while not getting anything for it. In one fell swoop, then just did away with their business. Wed, 09 Jan 2008 01:01:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (madcrow) Comments bad move? http://osnews.com/thread?295016 http://osnews.com/thread?295016
In one fell swoop, then just did away with their business.


BSDL hasn't really hurt ISC's business. Nor has it hurt the Kerberos, Apache, or X11 people. If a company holds the primary expertise in a field (like ISC has for BIND, ISC DHCP, and so on) then revenue opportunities will follow.

A software author need not control the users or redistributors of their work in order to make a living. Wed, 09 Jan 2008 01:17:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (mibh) Comments RE: Good move for Unix, bad move for 4Front. http://osnews.com/thread?295019 http://osnews.com/thread?295019
The GPL and CDDL rather limited the comercial, proprietary use that could be made of OSS by parties outside 4Front. Now with a release under the BSD license, 4Front have esentially given away the ability to use OSS in closed-source products, while not getting anything for it. In one fell swoop, then just did away with their business.


The GPL did, the CDDL did not (not from any practical standpoint). Wed, 09 Jan 2008 01:22:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (binarycrusader) Comments RE: Good move for Unix, bad move for 4Front. http://osnews.com/thread?295032 http://osnews.com/thread?295032
In one fell swoop, then just did away with their business.


Yes, I'm sure they didn't in any way at all investigate the different options and instead let some random engineer make the decision.
And how could they have forgotten to consult the business model experts at the OSNews forums? Wed, 09 Jan 2008 03:42:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Soulbender) Comments oss http://osnews.com/thread?295038 http://osnews.com/thread?295038 Well the damage is done and alsa will probably stay. The problem with oss is that after maintaining it for linux the author went commercial, which is not bad thing by itself but it is rather a huge disadvantage to have to pay for an essetial part of the operating system, especially one that is distributed under gpl2. I don't know the details, but i've heard the alsa architecture is not pretty either but thank god threre are alot of audio abstraction libraries out there. Wed, 09 Jan 2008 06:49:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (nulleight) Comments RE: Woohoo http://osnews.com/thread?295053 http://osnews.com/thread?295053 Meh - ALSA is technically superior. Wed, 09 Jan 2008 09:01:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (sardaukar) Comments RE: Woohoo http://osnews.com/thread?295054 http://osnews.com/thread?295054 Yes, OSS is a great sound architecture with great documentation and all apps support it.

I do not know why Linux still keep this ALSA shit, while OSS is avialable, even at their beloved GPL2.

ALSA documentation, is as good as Linux documentation [very poor], check options.c for more info ... Wed, 09 Jan 2008 10:03:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (vermaden) Comments RE: Good move for Unix, bad move for 4Front. http://osnews.com/thread?295082 http://osnews.com/thread?295082 Read here.

http://www.4front-tech.com/hannublog/


It seems that they killed their revenue by going to GPL/CDDL. So BSD shouldn't hurt more. Wed, 09 Jan 2008 13:01:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (vegai) Comments RE[2]: Good move for Unix, bad move for 4Front. http://osnews.com/thread?295100 http://osnews.com/thread?295100 The grammar in the comments section is horrible, but it has some funny moments. It's like the lolcats were giving advice.

"Let Red Hats acquires you." ^__^ Wed, 09 Jan 2008 15:39:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Flatland_Spider) Comments RE[2]: Woohoo http://osnews.com/thread?295101 http://osnews.com/thread?295101 No idea...

Oh wait, maybe because emu10k1 works in 5.1 configuration -out of the box- on my Audigy 2?
Or maybe because the nVidia HD sound works in 5.1 and 7.1 configuration, again out of the box, on my Gigabyte/Athlon64 combo?
... And I can continue. (~30 different configurations)

Alsa may not work for you, but it works out of the box for me - on a -large- number of machines/configurations.

(Well deserved) sarcasm aside, OSS will closed source when Linux switched to Alsa.
OSS is ~4 years too late.

- GilboaEdited 2008-01-09 16:17 UTC Wed, 09 Jan 2008 16:16:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (gilboa) Comments good, but too late http://osnews.com/thread?295131 http://osnews.com/thread?295131 This is good news, however its too late for linux, we needed this 5-7 years ago, now ALOT of effort went into alsa, and i doubt very much linux will ditch it, even though we might wish it. Wed, 09 Jan 2008 21:57:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Redeeman) Comments Licence http://osnews.com/thread?295132 http://osnews.com/thread?295132 There are a couple ways to spell, "licence," the English way, and the American way, "license." The, "c," and the, "s," are changed depending on one's dialect. However, "lisence," is not one of the ways to spell, "licence." [See article headline.] Wed, 09 Jan 2008 22:07:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Janizary) Comments RE: Woohoo http://osnews.com/thread?295196 http://osnews.com/thread?295196 ALSA was a dream come true! OSS was so hard to configure, even to configure the 5.1 speaker config or something as simple as the Treble/Bass.

So I say, unless OSS changes, it's never going to be the default in Linux. Thu, 10 Jan 2008 07:59:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Quake) Comments RE[2]: Woohoo http://osnews.com/thread?295239 http://osnews.com/thread?295239 Your post is irrelevant "Quake".

OSS is the de facto "Unix audio" standard.. most Unix systems either have their own OSS emulation layer, or a commercial licence from 4-front.

Now that it's BSD licenced, OSS emulation layers can be improved.. or even replaced with the actual 4-front code base.

Linux is the entity that always seems to break with tradition.. it's as if Linux developers don't think twice about "Cross-Unix" portability.

Idiots.. Thu, 10 Jan 2008 16:23:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (BSDfan) Comments RE[3]: Woohoo http://osnews.com/thread?295249 http://osnews.com/thread?295249 You operate under a false assumption, the assumption that Linux is in any way a Unix. It's not and is not trying to be, that's why it ignores all real conventions. The Unix-likeness of Linux was useful when Linux was trying to become popular, at the time it was Unix-enough and free, and that remains the case, but that doesn't mean it's trying to be Unix. Thu, 10 Jan 2008 19:49:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Janizary) Comments RE[3]: Woohoo http://osnews.com/thread?295403 http://osnews.com/thread?295403 BSDfan, I'm talking from a customer point of view and my experience was better with Alsa than with OSS.

If OSS can be better at handling the simple sound configuration, good to them. But for now, Alsa has the lead.

Not everybody is technical. Fri, 11 Jan 2008 19:44:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Quake) Comments