Editing OpenAL (section)

==History==
OpenAL was originally developed in 2000 by [[Loki Software]] to help them in their business of [[porting]] [[Microsoft Windows|Windows]] games to [[Linux]].<ref>{{cite press release |url=http://linux.omnipotent.net/article.php?article_id=7626 |title=Press release with regards to OpenAL |access-date=2011-07-18 |archive-date=2016-03-06 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160306095132/http://linux.omnipotent.net/article.php?article_id=7626 |url-status=dead }}</ref> After the demise of Loki, the project was maintained for a time by the [[free software community|free software]]/[[open source community]], and implemented on [[NVIDIA]] nForce sound cards and motherboards. It was hosted (and largely developed) by [[Creative Technology]] until circa 2012. 

Since 1.1 (2009), the sample implementation by Creative has turned proprietary,{{Citation needed|reason=Creative's SVN OpenAL source files dated from 2006 are marked with LGPL.|date=November 2021}} with the last releases in free licenses still accessible through the project's [[Apache Subversion|Subversion]] [[source code repository]]. However, [[#Implementations|OpenAL Soft]] is a widely used open source alternative and remains actively maintained and extended.

While the OpenAL charter says that there will be an "Architecture Review Board" (ARB) modeled on the OpenGL ARB,{{cn|date=April 2023}} no such organization has ever been formed and the OpenAL specification is generally handled and discussed via email on its public mailing list.

The original mailing list, openal-devel hosted by Creative, ran from March 2003 to circa August 2012.<ref>{{cite web |title=Wayback Machine prefix query: openal-devel archive |url=http://opensource.creative.com/pipermail/openal%2Ddevel/%2A |access-date=25 April 2023}}{{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://opensource.creative.com/pipermail/openal-devel/* |date=* }}</ref> Ryan C. Gordon, a Loki veteran who went on to develop [[Simple DirectMedia Layer]], started a new mailing list and website at OpenAL.org in January 2014.<ref>{{cite web |title=The openal January 2014 Archive by thread |url=https://openal.org/pipermail/openal/2014-January/thread.html |website=openal.org}}</ref> As of February 2023, the list remains in use.