linuxaudio.org

> >  Before talking about an individual developer's

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> > "responsibility" to do free work for a hardware company, we should

> > be talking about that developer's worth to the company.

> > Perhaps - but let me put it like this. The professional Linux audio

> market is currently so small as to be insignificant to a hardware

> company. We currently rely on good will to get any loan hardware or

> specifications.

> while i may agree with the general gist of marek's first objection, it

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> seems to me he is (again) shooting the messenger here.

And you're again insulting me publicly, although i woudln't say a word

if you didn't know about my intentions long ago. 
> it is certainly more desirable to have vendors supply drivers or

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> development samples of hardware without strings attached. but the fact is,

> many don't.

That doesn't mean we should encourage *loans* for the purpose of doing a driver which should be done by companies.

"You're going to do the driver for us, return the hw in a perfect condition and as soon as possible."

They deserve a lot more than be treated like that by companies.
As i said before, all we can do right now is:

1. advise people to buy hw which already is supported. nice advertising btw.

2. require donations and specs for hw which isn't available

3. widen the userbase considerably, there's lots of tools and mechanisms that would help us to achieve that.
> if i understood daniel's intent correctly, he is trying to provide a

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> *mechanism* for how hardware loans and/or donations should be handled.

> marek is talking about *policy*. in good unix tradition, those should

> kept separate.

Well i was talking about the *purpose* of hw loans, to be clear enough.

But i'd like to know how you distinguish a policy from a mechanism in this case, Joern.
Marek