From: Giuliano Pochini <pochini@shiny.it>
To: Michal Kostrzewa <m.kostrzewa@pentacomp.com.pl>
Cc: alsa-devel@lists.sourceforge.net
Subject: RE: Lynx AES16 driver
Date: Tue, 20 Jan 2004 09:40:36 +0100 (CET) [thread overview]
Message-ID: <XFMail.20040120094036.pochini@shiny.it> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <1074532503.3031.33.camel@gentoo>
On 19-Jan-2004 Michal Kostrzewa wrote:
> 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.
Yes, I got the same answer when I asked about the LynxTwo.
> My question is: has an ALSA driver to be an open source?
Yes, otherwise you have to release binary drivers for each ALSA version,
kernel version, compiler, architecture. It's impossible.
> 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.
If you split your driver in two parts: one (GPL) that interfaces with ALSA
and the real driver (non-GPL). There are many examples. eg. The ToucamPro
webcam driver, Nvidia drivers and my driver for Echoaudio soundcards.
> Is this whole situation hopeless? Have I any arguments to use in the
> discussion with Lynxstudio?
Yep :( They don't like the "invasive" GPL. I can't understand those
people. We are speaking about a *driver*. The card is the product they
sell. Customers don't buy the card because they need to use the driver.
--
Giuliano.
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next prev parent reply other threads:[~2004-01-20 8:40 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 7+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2004-01-19 17:15 Lynx AES16 driver Michal Kostrzewa
2004-01-19 17:46 ` Takashi Iwai
2004-01-19 20:55 ` Dan Hollis
2004-01-20 12:28 ` Michal Kostrzewa
2004-01-20 15:38 ` Ed Wildgoose
2004-01-20 8:40 ` Giuliano Pochini [this message]
2004-01-20 9:03 ` Glenn Maynard
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