Re: ALSA vs OSS/free

[Daniel Caujolle-Bert <segfault@club-internet.fr>]

Hi,

Kevin Conder wrote:
> 
> > > > Kai Vehmanen wrote on Thu, 07 Mar 2002 05:41:34 -0800:
> > > >
> > > > Why is ALSA the better alternative?
> > > > Have I missed some important points?
> > >
> > > Kevin Conder wrote:
> > >
> > >         OSS has one crucial advantage over ALSA: documentation!
> > > Perhaps one day ALSA will have something like the Programmer's Guide
> > > to OSS. Check it out at http://www.opensound.com/pguide/
> >
> > Daniel Caujolle-Bert:
> >
> >        And this is a nice troll.
> 
>         A troll is an email that is posted to elicit a huge amount of
> responses. (Example: What is the best audio editor?) I don't think my
> email was a troll. I'm amazed that it even got this response.

	The main fact is 4Front is a commercial society, they ship
binary only drivers. I think there are many people working in this
society, and some are probably working on the documentation.
	Take a look at CVS logs, i don't see dozen of devels, are
you agree. So, i think there's a time to code THEN there a time 
to build docs (the doxygen sections in code are oftenly updated).

	This is why i think there is a non-sense in this *advandage*
of OSS here.

> 
>         Kai was asking if he missed some important points. I think
> documentation is an important point. I didn't imagine that it would
> be so controversial.
> 
> >       Do you want to write this documentation, i guess developper
> > team will help you.
> 
>         I have helped in small ways, wherever I can. I've helped with the
> ALSA HOWTO and other projects. Unfortunately, I could never get ALSA 0.9.x
> to compile so I'm still using 0.5 for now.

	Already today ?. I haven'y seen a compilation problem for a long
time now. Have you tried latest official beta release ?

>         As far getting help from the developer team, they weren't very
> patient about my compilation problems... I've posted other requests like
> re-opening the alsa-doc mailing list that have been ignored. I don't mean
> any offense to the ALSA developers, I realize that they're really busy
> right now.

	Developpers can't spend too much time in user support, this is 
another job i think. They just can show you a the way, most of the
time.

>         So I'm waiting for things to stabilize, that's why I said "one
> day..."

	Why waiting, help them, if you have time, if you want help the
world. I'm pretty sure if you try another time, you will get feedback
from Alsa devels and Alsa client devels to write a nice Alsa
Programmer's
Guide, since alsa09 is largely used in native mode.

> 
> >        I'm amazed how some people are so strong with their mouth !
> 
>         This sentence is very confusing but I think it's supposed to be a
> personal attack. I really don't know what to do at this point... Would
> changing my message to "ALSA is missing something like The Programmer's
> Guide to OSS" be better?

	This mean, critisism is so easy, helping people is another
story. And yes, the message is better, less offending (as my point
of view, even if i'm not an Alsa devel (lucky are they ;-) ).

Cheers.
-- 
73's de Daniel, F1RMB.

              -=- Daniel Caujolle-Bert -=- segfault@club-internet.fr -=-
                        -=- f1rmb@f1rmb.ampr.org (AMPR NET) -=-

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