Lynx AES16 driver

[Michal Kostrzewa <m.kostrzewa@pentacomp.com.pl>]

Hello,

Please help me in that license related case:
I want to write a Lynx AES16 (http://www.lynxstudio.com/aes16.html) ALSA
driver (I'm from Warsaw University of Technology and we want to use this
card in our investigations). I wrote to Lynxstudio, and I received an
answer that driver related specs are accessible under terms of
Non-Disclosure Agreement which doesn't allow distribution of source code
or any derived materials thus preventing development of ALSA driver as
ALSA drivers are open source.

My question is: has an ALSA driver to be an open source? On
www.alsa-project.org there is a sentence: "ALSA is released under the
GPL (GNU General Public license) and the LGPL (GNU Lesser General Public
License)." (please note the LGPL). I understand, that there can be a
driver distributed in binary form (e.g in fact firmware needed to run
hdsp are distributed in binary form), GPL means that you cannot close
the ALSA core framework. 

Is this whole situation hopeless? Have I any arguments to use in the
discussion with Lynxstudio?

Thank you in advance and best regards,
Michal Kostrzewa





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