Re: [Alsa-devel] Full support for Creamware Noah and SFP
Willie Sippel wrote: But I'm not sure about, wether the NDA agrees in the basic alsa principles. What are the developers of alsa are thinking about that agreement? AFAIK drivers for ATI hardware are developed in a similar way (ATI gives specs under an NDA, the resulting driver is open source). Takashi, is that right? I told Frank about the work you did on Noah support, and he was _very_ impressed. Well, there isn't much reason to be impressed, as the Noah conforms to the USB audio specification, and the driver already implemented it. (The only reason I had to make a change to the driver was that the Noah and the driver, uh, didn't entirely agree on how to interpret a minor detail of the spec.) Tell him that NetBSD and OpenBSD have USB MIDI drivers, too. :-) Unlike the USB audio/MIDI parts, writing support for the vendor- specific parts of the Noah and for the SFP PCI cards won't be a matter of ten minutes, of course. It should work as follows: 1. Interested developers would sign the NDA. 2. Those developers would get the source and specs, and tell CW what parts need to become open to get the hardware working. Well, I would be interested in this. Regards, Clemens --- This SF.Net email is sponsored by: IBM Linux Tutorials Free Linux tutorial presented by Daniel Robbins, President and CEO of GenToo technologies. Learn everything from fundamentals to system administration.http://ads.osdn.com/?ad_id=1470alloc_id=3638op=click ___ Alsa-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/alsa-devel
Re: [Alsa-devel] Full support for Creamware Noah and SFP
At Wed, 10 Mar 2004 11:28:39 +0100 (MET), Clemens Ladisch wrote: Willie Sippel wrote: But I'm not sure about, wether the NDA agrees in the basic alsa principles. What are the developers of alsa are thinking about that agreement? AFAIK drivers for ATI hardware are developed in a similar way (ATI gives specs under an NDA, the resulting driver is open source). Takashi, is that right? yes. but just make sure that you will release the driver source codes under GPL even after you get the datasheet under NDA. that is, the information there can be used as a public form. (thus, in many cases, you don't need even NDA - it's just a question of trust.) BTW, the firmware binary is not a part of the driver, so it's not necessarily in the GPL form. it can be distributed as a binary. i think many companies are afraid of opening their DSP source codes rather than the driver codes. it's no problem if the DSP is apart from the driver. Takashi --- This SF.Net email is sponsored by: IBM Linux Tutorials Free Linux tutorial presented by Daniel Robbins, President and CEO of GenToo technologies. Learn everything from fundamentals to system administration.http://ads.osdn.com/?ad_id=1470alloc_id=3638op=click ___ Alsa-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/alsa-devel
Re: [Alsa-devel] Full support for Creamware Noah and SFP
Takashi Iwai wrote: At Wed, 10 Mar 2004 11:28:39 +0100 (MET), Clemens Ladisch wrote: AFAIK drivers for ATI hardware are developed in a similar way (ATI gives specs under an NDA, the resulting driver is open source). Takashi, is that right? yes. but just make sure that you will release the driver source codes under GPL even after you get the datasheet under NDA. that is, the information there can be used as a public form. (thus, in many cases, you don't need even NDA - it's just a question of trust.) BTW, the firmware binary is not a part of the driver, so it's not necessarily in the GPL form. it can be distributed as a binary. i think many companies are afraid of opening their DSP source codes rather than the driver codes. it's no problem if the DSP is apart from the driver. Takashi I think we've to split the theme to different parts. - an usb driver for the Noah with the capabilitiy to use both usb configurations (control and midi/audio) at the same time. -an another (pci)driver to support the creamware DSP-cards. - an user-space application to manage the different cards, devices and uploadable plugins As I understood Willie, the drivers aren't a subject of the NDA. The NDA covers only the details of the user-space application. Hartmut -- Hartmut Geissbauer [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- This SF.Net email is sponsored by: IBM Linux Tutorials Free Linux tutorial presented by Daniel Robbins, President and CEO of GenToo technologies. Learn everything from fundamentals to system administration.http://ads.osdn.com/?ad_id=1470alloc_id=3638op=click ___ Alsa-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/alsa-devel
Re: [Alsa-devel] Full support for Creamware Noah and SFP
I think we've to split the theme to different parts. - an usb driver for the Noah with the capabilitiy to use both usb configurations (control and midi/audio) at the same time. -an another (pci)driver to support the creamware DSP-cards. - an user-space application to manage the different cards, devices and uploadable plugins As I understood Willie, the drivers aren't a subject of the NDA. The NDA covers only the details of the user-space application. That's exactly what we had in mind... Creamware set up a private mailinglist for the initial task: separation of the necessary parts for ALSA; and the porting of the user space app. I've sent him your and Clemens' email address, you should get the invitation soon. If anyone else is interested, just post - I'll forward your address to Frank. Hope to see you on the SCOPE 4 Linux list soon... ;-) -- Willie Sippel [EMAIL PROTECTED] [ z ] ! --- This SF.Net email is sponsored by: IBM Linux Tutorials Free Linux tutorial presented by Daniel Robbins, President and CEO of GenToo technologies. Learn everything from fundamentals to system administration.http://ads.osdn.com/?ad_id=1470alloc_id=3638op=click ___ Alsa-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/alsa-devel
Re: [Alsa-devel] Full support for Creamware Noah and SFP
Hi Willie, Willie Sippel wrote: Hi. As some of you may know, Creamware (http://www.creamware.de) is under new management since 2004 - and they have changed their mind regarding Linux support. Fine. [snipped interesting information about the SFP] I'm a user of the Creamware Noah (Ex). With extensive help from Clemens Ladisch we've got the audio and the midi interface working with the current alsa-cvs. (driver snd-usb-audio) I would really be amazed to have full Linux support for that device and I've some programming capabilities as well. But I'm not sure about, wether the NDA agrees in the basic alsa principles. What are the developers of alsa are thinking about that agreement? I'm working (for now only for my own requirements) on a midi based gui to control the different plugins. Without the possibilty to upload plugins so far. That's done by my one Windows machine. Ok, that doesn't happen that much. But it would be fine, to manage the CF-Card and other settings via the attached computer. The architecture that I'm able to provide is x86. Regards, Hartmut -- Hartmut Geissbauer [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- This SF.Net email is sponsored by: IBM Linux Tutorials Free Linux tutorial presented by Daniel Robbins, President and CEO of GenToo technologies. Learn everything from fundamentals to system administration.http://ads.osdn.com/?ad_id=1470alloc_id=3638op=click ___ Alsa-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/alsa-devel
Re: [Alsa-devel] Full support for Creamware Noah and SFP
I would really be amazed to have full Linux support for that device and I've some programming capabilities as well. But I'm not sure about, wether the NDA agrees in the basic alsa principles. What are the developers of alsa are thinking about that agreement? Hi Hartmut. I even wanted to contact you and Clemens off-list on this topic... I told Frank about the work you did on Noah support, and he was _very_ impressed. This even was one of the reasons he agreed on supporting Linux, given a capable programmer would join the show... Well, like I stated, the NDA would not really affect the driver, but the tool to upload the plugins. It's just that CW needs to know what parts of the current SFP solution are needed to provide basic support for the platform. That driver would be OSS and the necessary specs should be released, freely available to everyone without the need to sign a NDA. Check here: http://www.alsa-project.org/~cdavid/vendorinfo/call.html The NDA Creamware wants you to sign does not restrict the release of the sourcecode, so, everyone can access and modify the code - no problem with the GPL. It should work as follows: 1. Interested developers would sign the NDA. 2. Those developers would get the source and specs, and tell CW what parts need to become open to get the hardware working. 3. CW releases those informations, an ALSA driver would be written, enabling audio I/O and the control interface. 4. Interested developers would port the remaining parts of the SFP (the plugin handler), to be released closed-source. And, as you may know, the Luna/ Pulsar/ Powersampler cards are also part of the SFP, and those cards are completely worthless for a Linux DAW right now. And you wouldn't need to create your own control tool anymore, 'cause the interface is already part of the .dev file - it uses an interface description language similar to JavaScript for platform independence... I could bug-test the driver for Powersampler, and provide x86 and AMD64 binaries - PPC, anyone...? ;-) Ciao, -- Willie Sippel [EMAIL PROTECTED] [ z ] ! --- This SF.Net email is sponsored by: IBM Linux Tutorials Free Linux tutorial presented by Daniel Robbins, President and CEO of GenToo technologies. Learn everything from fundamentals to system administration.http://ads.osdn.com/?ad_id=1470alloc_id=3638op=click ___ Alsa-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/alsa-devel
