From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Rene Herman Subject: Re: User space drivers Date: Fri, 03 Aug 2007 01:25:08 +0200 Message-ID: <46B267D4.3040702@gmail.com> References: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Return-path: Received: from smtpq1.groni1.gr.home.nl (smtpq1.groni1.gr.home.nl [213.51.130.200]) by alsa0.perex.cz (Postfix) with ESMTP id DE85C103863 for ; Fri, 3 Aug 2007 01:27:52 +0200 (CEST) In-Reply-To: List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Sender: alsa-devel-bounces@alsa-project.org Errors-To: alsa-devel-bounces@alsa-project.org To: "Wallace, Brooke" Cc: alsa-devel@alsa-project.org List-Id: alsa-devel@alsa-project.org On 08/02/2007 11:39 PM, Wallace, Brooke wrote: > I've been trying to sort thru the ALSA docs and am starting to get the > impression that all of the existing drivers are written as Kernel > Modules. Yes. Some stuff like mixing happens in userspace but the lowlevel drivers are in kernel space. > Doesn't this mean that they are running in Kernel space and infact are > not User Space drivers? Yes. > Shouldn't there be an ALSA Drivers API document that covers an API that > User Space Drivers can use? I must be mssing something here... I believe you are. Who told you that ALSA drivers ran in userspace? > I'm looking into ALSA because my company wants to use this standard for > writing User Space drivers for our product running on various linux > kernels. The reasoning for this is strictly proprietary licensing - our > leagl department is not comfortable with the GPL and the possiblitiy that > something written for Kernel space could at some time be considered as > required to be GPL - not my decision... You have a sensible legal department. Many hold that distributing Linux kernelspace code under a non GPL compatible license is illegal, period. Your job, should you chose to accept it, is convince them that releasing the code you will be writing under a GPL compatible license is not actually all that scary. Pointing them to all the other companies that do so can help. The other option you have is make do without _any_ help from _anyone_ on this list at least. Good luck. Rene.