The Open Sound System (OSS) is an interface for making and capturing sound in Unix or Unix-like operating systems. It is based on standard Unix devices (i.e. POSIX read, write, ioctl, etc.). The term also sometimes refers to the software in a Unix kernel that provides the OSS interface; it can be thought of as a device driver, or a collection of device drivers for sound controller hardware. The goal of OSS is to allow the writing of sound-based applications that are agnostic of the underlying sound hardware.
OSS was created in 1992 by Hannu Savolainen and is available in 11 major Unix-like operating systems. OSS is distributed under four license options, three of which are free software licences, thus making OSS free software.
Read more about Open Sound System: API, Free, Proprietary, Free, Other Implementations, OSS/3D, OSS in Relation To ALSA
Famous quotes containing the words open, sound and/or system:
“In that open field
If you do not come too close, if you do not come too close,
On a summer midnight, you can hear the music
Of the weak pipe and the little drum
And see them dancing around the bonfire
The association of man and woman
In daunsinge, signifying matrimonie....”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)
“The Young Man’s Best Companion, The Farrier’s Sure Guide, The Veterinary Surgeon, Paradise Lost, The Pilgrim’s Progress, Robinson Crusoe, Ash’s Dictionary, and Walkingame’s Arithmetic, constituted his library; and though a limited series, it was one from which he had acquired more sound information by diligent perusal than many a man of opportunities had done from a furlong of laden shelves.”
—Thomas Hardy (1840–1928)
“Those words freedom and opportunity do not mean a license to climb upwards by pushing other people down. Any paternalistic system that tries to provide for security for everyone from above only calls for an impossible task and a regimentation utterly uncongenial to the spirit of our people.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)