[alsa-devel] [Alsa-devel] Quality resampling code for libasound

[Takashi Iwai]

At Fri, 23 Mar 2007 20:36:52 +1100,
Jean-Marc Valin wrote:
> 
> > I guess this should work. This would be "import the speex version
> > unchanged" only with s/alsa-lib/alsa-plugins/. It would depend on how
> > many distributions would have no issue with making alsa-lib dependent on
> > alsa-plugins.
> > 
> > Keeping it in alsa-plugins would as far as I've understood have two
> > reasons:
> > 
> > a) if it were to be put into alsa-lib directly, you'd want (style)
> > changes that would have to be kept in place over possible frequent
> > updates, and
> 
> OK, first question here. Is any alsa developer even qualified *and*
> interested in maintaining that code? I feel like this thread is taking
> up more time that any maintenance that would be done within alsa and
> time lost to indentation and whatnot.

Of course, once after it's merged to the alsa-lib tree, this becomes
our responsibility.  This is why coping code makes the maintenance
harder.  It means the maintenance action is done in paralllel, and
conflicts may happen very likely from both sides.

> > b) some fear and doubt with respect to licenses?
> 
> What's the license FUD about now?
> 
> > As to b), if alsa-lib is dependent on alsa-plugins in distributions,
> > this might mean all the same license questions arise at least for them.
> > Given that Jean-Marc himself is advocating just pulling it into alsa-lib
> > directly, I assume something could be worked out that would quiet any
> > worries instead?
> 
> OK, so I never quite understood why you don't want BSD-licensed code in
> alsa, but I've already said I'm willing to allow relicensing to LGPL as
> long as it doesn't mean too much pollution in my source files.

That's good.  Keeping the single license in the whole tree is very
important.

BTW, what one calls "pollution" can be "sanitization" for others.
That's the opensource development...

> Note BTW
> that if you want to link with libspeex directly then you'll need to live
> with the BSD license because there are some parts of Speex that cannot
> be dual-licensed because I don't own the copyright.

If we reuse the libspeex shlib, we won't do it from alsa-lib but from
the existing plugin in alsa-plugins package.  So, alsa-lib will stay
unchanged.

> > Not really any coments on a). How many updates can be expected? I saw
> > Jean-Marc say things about SSE optimizations, but optimizations aren't
> > vital...
> 
> There's still quite a bit to do, even though ALSA probably doesn't care
> about it. SSE is one, but there's also finishing the fixed-point (which
> still requires float in the initialisations), and possibly improving the
> quality of the fixed-point code.

Actually, any optimization would be interesting for us, too.


Takashi