[Swfdec] Resurrect OSS support for non-ALSA operating systems

[Benjamin Otte]

On Fri, Oct 17, 2008 at 11:18 PM, Chris Wareham
<chriswareham at chriswareham.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> I may be wrong, but I recall the main argument for inclusion of ALSA in
> Linux was that the version of OSS it replaced couldn't multiplex audio,
> or could only do so on one particular cards hardware mixer.
>
Considering that ALSA's kernel drivers still don't do software mixing
and that mixing functionality was only introduced when dmix came
around, I'd say you may indeed be wrong.

The reasons for ALSA inclusion that I remember were a saner design,
lower latency, more active maintainers and more drivers.
Unfortunately that's only the kernel bits, not libalsa. But today
we're left with that libalsa, which is a library with multiple
backends (Pulse, Linux ALSA drivers, Jack and there might even be an
experimental OSS backend). And I don't see why the BSD people can't
make that lib work. I still have the feeling that they are
disgrundtled by the L standing for Linux in there.

Cheers,
Benjamin