Does anyone compose music using any oftheportsfromthe/ports/audio collection in FreeBSD?

[Michael Nottebrock]

*sigh*

I originally invited Dev to comment in this thread about the current 
development/state of OSS because some people suggested changing the API of 
our soundsystem. Dev made a remark about further improving the MIDI support 
of their product _not being a top priority_ at the moment, because they want 
to pave the way for modern digital audio technology based on OSS first and 
everybody seems to have just read that remark, or half of it, and 
misunderstood it to boot.

I'm sure you all know this, John, but perhaps I should clear it up a bit for 
the occasional readers of this list and those who are perhaps only starting 
out with this whole multimedia thing:

OSS is two things: It's 1.) The Open Sound System, a commercial software 
product that contains sound drivers for a wide variety of hardware, developed 
by 4Front Technologies. It is available for many UNIX flavours, including - 
for more information see their website, http://www.opensound.com.

OSS is also 2.)Tthe commonly used name for the API defined by this product. 
Many sound drivers and driver frameworks are source and binary compatible to 
this API, including FreeBSD's and Linux'.

So when Dev Mazumdar discusses features and future directions of OSS, he 
discusses the _product_. That's why discussing the future development of MIDI 
support like it has happened here is offtopic - it's the future development 
of the OSS product, discussing it should happen at 4front's facilities and 
between 4front developers and (prospective) customers. 

Dev is at the moment not at all involved in actual development of FreeBSD's 
_own_ sound driver framework (except trying to coordinate some API-related 
issues). The development of OUR stuff, including getting MIDI support back 
into FreeBSD's own sound drivers, is currently done by people like Matthew 
Kanner and Seigo Tanimura and it's happening in FreeBSD-CURRENT.

-- 
   ,_,   | Michael Nottebrock               | lofi at freebsd.org
 (/^ ^\) | FreeBSD - The Power to Serve     | http://www.freebsd.org
   \u/   | K Desktop Environment on FreeBSD | http://freebsd.kde.org
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