Re: How to add a new MIDI device to the usbaudio driver

From: Kristian Amlie <kristian@amlie.name>
To: Paul Menzel <paulepanter@users.sourceforge.net>
Cc: Greg KH <greg@kroah.com>, alsa-devel@alsa-project.org
Subject: Re: How to add a new MIDI device to the usbaudio driver
Date: Sat, 27 Aug 2011 12:38:58 +0200	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <4E58C942.9020708@amlie.name> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <1314093725.3688.12.camel@mattotaupa>

On 08/23/11 12:02, Paul Menzel wrote:
> Am Dienstag, den 23.08.2011, 11:42 +0200 schrieb Kristian Amlie:
>> On 08/23/11 11:22, Daniel Mack wrote:
>>> On Tue, Aug 23, 2011 at 11:03 AM, Paul Menzel wrote:
>>>> … and ask the manufacturer about GNU/Linux support.
>>>>
>>>> Something like, you bought the hardware and expect it to work
>>>> everywhere. Additionally they make money by selling the hardware and not
>>>> developing a driver, so they should publish the documentation and even
>>>> pay someone – like Daniel or Clemens ? – to write the support for their
>>>> hardware. (Only when they say they do not have any money or something
>>>> like that, you can also tell them to donate/provide free hardware for
>>>> the developer and a contact address to their M$ Windows developer for
>>>> questions.)
>>>
>>> While I agree in general to your points, I think its not worth the
>>> effort in this particular case. It's probably very easy to add support
>>> for this by just sending one magic usb_control_msg up-front, and it's
>>> not complicated to sniff that value. From a customer standpoint,
>>> again, I'm sure the manufacturer will just state that they didn't
>>> promise any Linux support, and so you can't claim it.
>>
>> Their homepage states "We are currently in the final phase of
>> development in making all of our instruments class compliant.", which I
>> take to mean that they want their future products to use a standard MIDI
>> interface. Right now, Windows 7 and Vista 64 users are also left in the
>> dark, so I think they are as eager to fix this as we are, they just
>> decided to do it on the hardware side instead of the software side.
> 
> Still sending a message to them, would be good in my opinion.
> 
> 1. It shows them, that people are using their devices on GNU/Linux and
> that their decision to make it class compliant is a good move.
> 2. If they want to change that, maybe they are even releasing the
> necessary documentation so you can save your time installing Windows.

FYI, I sent them a message saying that Linux support has been added. I
thought it was better to put it in a positive light if we could: Now
they know that their devices are used in Linux, *and* they got a driver
for free!

-- 
Kristian
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