Re: [2.6 patch] schedule obsolete OSS drivers for removal

Olivier Galibert
2006-01-04T01:48:15Z

On Wed, Jan 04, 2006 at 01:33:27AM +0100, Thomas Sailer wrote:
> On Wed, 2006-01-04 at 00:10 +0100, Tomasz K?oczko wrote:
>
> > 1) ALSA API forces not use devices files and many things on sound managing
> > level are handled on user space library. This dissallow civilized
>
> Huh? Why's that? Actually, I welcome that ALSA does quite a lot in
> userspace, it could even do more. The whole format conversion and
> sampling rate conversion has no business in the kernel, IMO.

Doing things in userspace does not necessarily mean doing them in a
library, especially when it is required that the library be shared,
also known as "things _will_ break".

Especially since it tends to hide the real, user-accessible kernel
interface which has very, very annoying security implications. At
that point, the ALSA kernel-userspace interface seems entirely
un-reviewed by the kernel people who have an eye for race conditions,
wandering userland pointers, information leaks, out-of-range accesses
and this kind of things (no patches from Al Viro on alsa?) and that
does not really give me a warm and fuzzy feeling. And even if it is
reviewed at time t, it looks like it may change anytime a driver
author thinks it would help. Not good at all.

OG.