[Portaudio] Re: portaudio in Debian, license updates?

[Ross Bencina]

Hi Guys

I'm the dev lead for PortAudio.

Matt Brubeck wrote:
> Junichi Uekawa wrote:
>>>> Things like portaudio and MIDIshare never really arrived. (OK, I'm
>>>> exaggerating slightly - Doesn't Audacity use portaudio?)
>>>
>>> Audacity does use portaudio. Portaudio isn't dead and gone, but
>>> development is barely progressing. With portaudio-v19 audacity can
>>> use jack.

There are numerous active commercial applications which depend on 
PortAudio.. it is far from dead and gone. Quite naturally I believe it to be 
a technically superior solution to RtAudio, primarily because (last time I 
checked) RtAudio does not attempt to solve many of the technical problems 
which PortAudio does.

> Audacity upstream is considering switching to RtAudio, which is partly
> based on PortAudio and uses the same MIT-like license.  RtAudio supports
> JACK, and appears to be more actively maintained than PortAudio:
>
>   http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.audio.audacity.devel/10840

I would question whether RtAudio is more actively maintained... there are a 
number of developers actively working on PortAudio. It may be that Linux 
maintenances is lower with PortAudio than RtAudio.. I can't speak for that 
because PortAudio is a cross-platform solution and doesn't focus only on 
Linux.  As far as I know, at present we have only one active Linux 
comitter.. more are always welcome.

In general my opinion is that PortAudio is stable, and does not require a 
lot of development/maintenance. Certainly that is my personal experience 
with PortAudio on Windows (my primary platform). There is a lot of active 
development for PortAudio on MacOSX. I would love for there to be more Linux 
developers working on PortAudio.. perhaps you guys would consider 
participating more actively?

>> However, portaudio looks non-free to me.
>
> According to my reading of the license (and according to the PortAudio
> upstream authors), this clause is a non-binding request, and so it does
> not make the license non-free.  Please see this thread:
>
>   http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2004/11/msg00114.html

This is my understanding.


> PortAudio upstream was planning to change the license to clarify this,
> but I don't think they ever got around to tracking down all the
> contributors in order to do this.

I think there was never any clarity on what the license should be changed 
to. I am in touch with all of the contributors who hold copyright on the 
PortAudio source base. If Debian legal could provide some guidance as to 
what the change should be we would be happy to co-operate to ensure greater 
interoperability with the Debian Free Software community.

Best wishes

Ross.