Opensourcing firmware :)

[n8gray]

Ok, thanks for the clarification.

[vaivel]

Syabas: thank you guys for your openness, the fact that you sinserly listens to us and the mere fact that you made this board.

I my humble opinion i think you should focus on two two main areas, improve and bug fix playback, as you obviously already are doing according to the published beta progresses. This is the area where you will get a good/bad overall reputation compared to your competetors. Then, when resources permits, start focusing on making it possible for users to costumize it, skinning is a must (and on its way), and then come up with as many hooks/APIs for us to make user applications to interact with. There is no way you wil be able to make a product that will please all users, but if you get the fundementals work to perfection and on the same time give access to a unique level of customerization, you will have a killer product on you hand, to both your own and our pleasure.

[mattystorey001]

Agreed.

The sheer fact that a hard drive can be added to the PCH can/could allow for hundreds of avenues to allow for 3rd party applications to be used.

I use my PCH mainly for video play back, and i continue to read and follow threads on this forum about the UI and continuous reference to XBMC front end that allows IMDB, Amazon etc plugins.

It might be the way forward to propel development into these areas quicker by allowing 3rd party apps stored on a HD/USB etc.

I bounce between Meedios and my PCH. Meedios continually packs punch with its plugins and functionality but the PCH is gaining ground with its ease, and use.

I do not intent to use ILink etc (sorry!) as i would prefer the UI to be resolved properly.

Thank you for an informative discussion and my 2p.

[nprnncbl]

(05-30-2008 06:32 PM)alanh Wrote:  However LinuxTV/DVB and ALSA both are also GPL and after doing a bit of research today, I'm 95% sure any drivers using those frameworks would have to be opened sourced to be 'legal'

While it's true that ALSA is GPL, and that they will only include GPL contributions with the ALSA release, you can in fact write a binary-only ALSA module; from ALSA_Soundcard_Vendor_Information / Views_on_Binary_Only_drivers :
There is nothing to stop any company from developing a binary only driver that works with ALSA.

[stefkoch]

(08-29-2008 09:13 PM)nprnncbl Wrote:  While it's true that ALSA is GPL, and that they will only include GPL contributions with the ALSA release, you can in fact write a binary-only ALSA module; from ALSA_Soundcard_Vendor_Information / Views_on_Binary_Only_drivers :
There is nothing to stop any company from developing a binary only driver that works with ALSA.

http://alsa-project.org/main/index.php/Introduction
states that ALSA is also released under LGPL.
Does that change anything?

Anyway, as the last post is quite "aged"
I wondered if something happened so far
regarding the migration of the
"mrua" APIs to a more open DirectFB based API.

I read about using MPD on a usb-sound-stick,
so i guess there is no real progress towards having
snd-* kernel modules for the SMP8635 right?