The Association of Musical Electronics Industries (AMEI) – the organisation that oversees the Midi specification in Japan – has committed to funding the development of an open-source USB Midi 2.0 Host Driver Windows OS under a memorandum of understanding between AMEI, AmeNote Inc and Microsoft. The AMEI will underwrite the development cost with AmeNote providing the driver. 

Concurrent to this, Microsoft has agreed to begin development of a Windows standard open-source Midi 2.0 API. The driver and API will be managed as a permissively licenced (MIT licence) Microsoft open-source project. As a result, anyone may participate in the development as an open-source contributor in the future, or use the code in their own devices or operating systems.

Because of this open source arrangement, continuous and timely improvements and enhancements to the USB Midi 2.0 Host driver and Midi 2.0 API are expected. Development is currently underway with the goal of completing the development in 2023.

Midi 2.0 is a global industry-wide effort. The Midi Association (TMA – the organisation that oversees the Midi specification in all other areas of the world besides Japan – recently funded AmeNote’s development of the ProtoZOA, a USB Midi 2.0 prototyping board that software developers can use to test with their Midi 2.0 applications. AmeNote’s plans to release large parts of the ProtoZOA firmware as open-source code, enabling hardware developers to incorporate that code in their own Midi 2.0 devices.

AMEI and TMA also recently engaged with members of the ALSA community over the development of open-source drivers and APIs for the Linux platform. These developments signal a further step in the development of the Midi 2.0 ecosystem. They also highlight the continuing cooperative efforts of AMEI and TMA to work together to provide free Midi 2.0 resources (tools/applications) and open source code to make the development of Midi 2.0 products easier for companies of all sizes.

More: www.midi.org