From: Andi Kleen <ak@suse.de>
To: Alistair John Strachan <s0348365@sms.ed.ac.uk>
Subject: Re: [2.6 patch] schedule obsolete OSS drivers for removal
Date: Tue, 3 Jan 2006 14:52:09 +0100
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Cc: Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de>, perex@suse.cz, alsa-devel@alsa-project.org,
       James@superbug.demon.co.uk, sailer@ife.ee.ethz.ch,
       linux-sound@vger.kernel.org, zab@zabbo.net, kyle@parisc-linux.org,
       parisc-linux@lists.parisc-linux.org, jgarzik@pobox.com,
       Thorsten Knabe <linux@thorsten-knabe.de>, zwane@commfireservices.com,
       zaitcev@yahoo.com, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
References: <20050726150837.GT3160@stusta.de> <p7364p1jvkx.fsf@verdi.suse.de> <200601031347.19328.s0348365@sms.ed.ac.uk>
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On Tuesday 03 January 2006 14:47, Alistair John Strachan wrote:

> It strikes me that it's a bit of a chicken and egg problem. Vendors are still 
> releasing applications on Linux that support only OSS, partly due to 
> ignorance, but mostly because ALSA's OSS compatibility layer allows them to 
> lazily ignore the ALSA API and target all cards, old and new.

As long as it works why is that a bad thing? OSS API works just fine
for most sound needs. If you want to do high end sound you can still
use ALSA.

> Additionally, we can't get rid of OSS compatibility until pretty much all 
> hardware has an ALSA driver, and (inferred from your comment) we can't get 
> rid of OSS drivers until nothing supports OSS, because the whole of the ALSA 
> stuff is a bit larger...

We can never get rid of it.
Linux doesn't break widely used application interfaces.

> Even if Adrian's not trying to make this point (he's just removing duplicate 
> drivers, and opting for the newer ones), we accepted ALSA into the kernel. 
> It's probably about time we let OSS die properly, for sanity purposes.

Avoiding bloat is more important.

-Andi
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