> Consider audio instead. OSS always provided pretty much all the hardware features, but allow no resource sharing. Every single evolution on that front has been an increase in complexity to allow for resource sharing.
None of the API changes were required for resource sharing though so that complexity could (and should) have been contained to the implementation and those applications that actually need new features.
Which is actually the case. In fact, audio is the best examples where everything can plug into almost everything. padsp (if I'm not mistaken - not at the prompt right now) does just that.
padsp is a hack that intercepts the open() calls to /dev/dsp - if things were done better opening /dev/dsp would just work without any wrapper, even with statically linked applications.
None of the API changes were required for resource sharing though so that complexity could (and should) have been contained to the implementation and those applications that actually need new features.