Porting ALSA drivers to OSS may be easy, according to OSS ;)

[Dan Nelson]

In the last episode (May 26), Bruno said:
> I know FreeBSD is mainly conceived as a performance server OS and
> lacks in the multimedia field when compared with Linux which is much
> more generic.
> 
> But in terms of sound I think the scenario could change easily: you
> don't have ALSA drivers but according to this post it's possible to
> convert ALSA drivers into free OSS drivers:
> 
> http://www.4front-tech.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=48#48
> 
> This could mean reduced need for commercial OSS driver support :) And
> of course there may be licensing issues.
> 
> Not really my problem since I have a SB Live!, but this could easily
> improve FreeBSD image on the multimedia *NIX field :)

Are there very many cards not supported by FreeBSD?  Note that OSS can
mean two things: drivers provided by 4front, or a userland API for
playing sound.  FreeBSD's sound system provides an OSS API, but is not
OSS internally.  Porting a Linux ALSA driver to FreeBSD is probably
about as easy as porting a Linux OSS driver.

-- 
	Dan Nelson
	dnelson at allantgroup.com