>To be honest I think that only a very, very small part of the functionality
>will
>be available short term features such as: WAV, Midi, PCM, Simple effects,
>Stereo. This is mostly going to be a resource issue, for example to get where
>we are today on Win9x (please it is just an example no flames) it took 6
>engineers about 7 months. I expect that the development of the Linux driver
>will be slow until we actually have a library / sourcecode to distribute.
<snip>
>Creative not unwilling to provide programming information, there simply isn't
>any because it hasn't been written. We have almost never given this type of
>information out, instead we have exposed functionality through API's (Windows
>centric). So we have to work on writing the documents, sample source code,
>etc.
I think it would amaze you just how much making this an open source project
would help. And, as a hardware vendor, that wouldn't cut into sales at
all. I realize it's a different way of thinking, but instead of relying on
internal QC procedures, you'd have a lot of people on the Net poring over
the source looking for problems. And you'd basically gain free consulting
from the people who have written previous drivers for Linux, and know the
sound sub-system cold.
To be honest, if you go the familiar route of closed source, I can't
imagine many people buying the card for Linux. I, for one, would be very
hesitant to install a driver for which I didn't have source code. My main
concern would be that if Creative chose to discontinue Linux support, I'd
be stranded. If the source is open, I know that somebody will continue to
maintain it.
Open source would be a win-win situation for Creative here. Not only would
you gain the increased productivity of open source development, but you
would be surprised how many people will buy the card just to play with the
source code. After all, you aren't selling drivers, you're selling
hardware. And releasing the source and opening development can only result
in increased sales.
Linux market share is increasing rapidly and, as your interest shows, is
becoming a platform that hardware vendors need to consider. To be
successful in the Linux market, though, it's valuable to do things "the
Linux way", in the same way that it is necessary to do things "the
Macintosh way" if you expect success on that platform.
Certainly, it's a different way of working, and you'd have put some thought
into how to structure the project. From a cost standpoint, though, even if
you ignore the development advantages, releasing the source is a lot
cheaper than writing the documentation for a library API. And, perhaps
unlike the Windows platform, Linux developers would rather have source, anyway.
It's certainly a project design worth considering.
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