Hi all, I have been thinking about getting into NetBSD and embarking
on a project to port ALSA (http://www.alsa-project.org) to NetBSD (x86
to start off with).  I wanted to bring this issue up here to get
feedback on the practicality and usefulness of this proposal.  (I hope
this is an appropriate forum for this sort of question.  I looked at
the list descriptions, and decided this one would be best :)

Would there be much interest here in having an ALSA port?  I believe
that having ALSA working on BSD might get the ball rolling in getting
more audio apps and APIs ported to BSD, and possibly even seeing BSD
taken seriously as a platform on which to do digital audio work.  I
think this would be good.

Of course there are many issues to consider.  Some of the most
important ones are:

1. Firstly, ALSA is under the GPL, and so a port could not be merged
into the source tree.  An LKM would be the only way around this.

2. Linux has its low-latency scheduling patches, and this is very
attractive for people doing real-time audio work.  How does NetBSD
compare here?

3. Would this actually be worthwhile from a practical point of view;
would it encourage people to use BSD for digital audio work, or is the
momentum in Linux just far too strong?  And would the NetBSD people be
interested in seeing this sort of thing happening?

Comments, anybody?  Anything else to add?

-Andrew