So, why no sound, exactly?

You're entirely right, ninja, that the arguments are pointless, or more accurately that they serve no purpose.

They serve no purpose because nobody on the LL side is actually engaging in objective and reasoned discussion about it, to decide whether it would be helpful to go open source on the objective merits of the case.

Instead, all we get are handwaving dismissals like the one you made. "There are some very good reasons" --- oh really? "When we're good and ready?" Oh really? Such comments are of course merely a dismissal.

Of course, there is no reason why LL *HAS* to listen to anything that its customers say. Some well-reputed people do say that it's good business practice to do so though.

The arguments on this topic are very much to the point, being very much in the interest of customers and LL alike. But they serve no purpose whatsoever since nobody wishes to listen.

And when LL finally does decide to listen, it will be because (like Philip has said) an open competitor has arrived on the scene. Well I'm afraid it will be far too late for it then. It could be a megacorp like Google or IBM or Sony --- what chance of competing then? None. Your chance is now.

I think you missed or ignored ninjafoo's point. He meant "stop being off-topic, we've already wasted enough bandwidth on the subject, and beaten the subject to death."

We now return you to a thread ostensibly about *checks the title of the thread* the Linux client sound implementation.

Oh, I know that his post was merely a dismissal, Darkside. It was clear.

But you and Zi offered to fix the Linux client as external contractors, presumably because you feel that LL doesn't have the manpower to do the work internally. And my response was exactly on the same topic, which is to provide a solution to the manpower problem.

If my post was off-topic, then so was yours and Zi's.

Oh, without a doubt. We were all off topic. I'm just saying ninjafoo is right, and we need to get back on, as it were. Well, that and the whole "Open your code LL" thing has been beaten to death. I guess some of us are just tired of seeing thread after thread end up back at it. Although it seems the topic is winding down. *shrug*

It's probably an easy fix, but it only might get handled... eventually. We were told at one point that the Linux client is a priority again, and work was going to be done on it soon. Then we got another message that said "we're struggling to keep up with the mainstream changes." Seems like it got shelved again, and the recent grid attacks probably didn't help.

Since LL isn't going to open their code any time soon, and they're probably not going to contract with a recent college graduate with limited experience (me), the annoying fact of the situation is that we are getting screwed.

Swaying prims and Havok 2 can wait. "Bug fixes before new features" should be a mantra in the software industry by now.

Actually, that would be a very good reason to hire you ... you'd be cheap.

I wouldn't be cheap, as I'm a "too experienced" networking and systems consultant at the other end of the employment spectrum. But my advice to them about going open-source, is free.

Well that's true enough.