Re: portaudio in Debian, license updates?

[Matt Brubeck <mbrubeck@cs.hmc.edu>]

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.

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

> 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

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.