joltdude

AllKindOfCrazy

Support your shit for free, or I won't support you. You should send this guy a check yourself, dumbass.

awemaker

geowrian

Moldy Cheese

I don't think they can prove this, and if he never agreed to not reverse engineer, I'm pretty sure reverse engineering is legal in the US.

Buran

Brookespeed

axiomatic

Who would want to buy from a company that cripples their products on purpose? Not me.

mechfluff

When I realized that Creative hasn't released drivers compatable with Vista and I had to use these unsupported ones, I committed to never buying another product from them. This a'hole move by them certainly reinforces that decision.

You're pathetic Creative, absolutely pathetic.

RalphWiggum

sqeakytoy of the apocalypse

Blakamin

It will because eventually the people will realize that just owning a company doesn't entitle you to making outrageous amount of profit and owning 4+ cars. Balance will be reinstated with the ebb and bow of time. :)

AlanIn4D

Dark-Dx

Kind of funny how Creative made one guy into a martyr. I could only imagine if Microsoft did the same to the Windows Mobile community! ...luckily, they're not that stupid.

PynkFloydd

Creative, in their infinite wisdom, had decided that many of their older legacy products deserved to remain in the past. (read: Creative wanted you to go out and buy new stuff, preferably Creative's brand...) As such, they chose to concentrate on making sure that the new products managed to integrate smoothly with Vista, what I assume must be a difficult row to hoe. Without the ablility to hire a second development staff for products that would no longer generate revenues, they chose to make sure that their current crop had the best possible drivers they could come up with. (yes, intentional wording there if you choose to read it that way.) Then comes Daniel. Daniel full of rightous indignation (and furious anger), comes up with his own modifications to the Creative design team's software that makes the old product better faster stronger. And all he says is that he took a lot of time to develop this code, and if you felt like you had a few extra bucks burning a hole in your pocket, ship em on over his way, and he'd be grateful, maybe even tip his hat to ya.
Enter Ol' Phil... Now Phil has to do something, because dear Daniel is not only stepping on his team's IP, but he is also getting a few bucks out of the deal, bucks that should be going to Creative. Not to mention kicking great big gaping holes in Creative Inc.'s corporate 5 year plan. And Phil is gonna end up the fall guy. Personally I think that they should have handled it by buying out Danny-boy's drivers and calling them family, maybe even hiring him as a consultant. But they had every right to act as they did, and they could have been much, much meaner.

sqeakytoy of the apocalypse

As for my even-handedness, it's pretty clear from my last post that I'm talking about the subject of the article, not the article itself. I've read Gizmodo for a long time, and do so for the 'geekporn', not misinforming diatribes that seem to seek only to encourage flaming by those who aren't willing to take the time to actually get all of the facts and study the whole situation, yet believe they are qualified to sit in judgment over something they are in (mostly) complete ignorance of. BTW, if you have already started typing a scathing reply full of spelling mistakes, poor grammar, worse research, and four-letter words, then, yes, I am talking about you. If not, then congratulations! You are worthy of cake!!!!! :)

This article could have been written in a non-inflammatory way, so as to provoke intelligent debate in a mature manner instead of knee-jerk reactions, but that is obviously not part of the editors' agenda. If this was the only example, I wouldn't be so vocal about it. If all of their articles were like this, I wouldn't have Gizmodo as one of my home pages, and thus wouldn't have even seen it. My frustration is that, while they have some excellent articles on new technology, they also publish dreck like this. Considering that Gawker Media, Gizmodo's parent company, brags about Gizmodo's '8.9 million uniques per month', I think that I can be forgiven for wondering just what company the 'Corporate Greed' in the title refers to.

DeadlyDad

bigMoneyMIKE

ParJoe

But talk about tangential ...

"I'm surprised that an article decrying the government's position of mostly ignoring the dangers of dihydrogen monoxide hasn't been penned."

Are you serious?

And is really "even handed" to mock a writer for writing in the style of the blog he's writing for? Have you ever read Gizmodo before?

ParJoe

geowrian

@ParJoe: "With profound conceit you've entirely missed the point of this article's tone. In your haste to defend the legality of the company's "tactics" you completely dismiss their heinous customer service."

Not so. While I agree that not supporting older hardware on newer/alternate operating systems (or vice versa) is a poor choice, that is not the issue here. The article isn't talking about poor customer service directly, but the controversy surrounding the posted letter. The quality of Creative Labs' customer service is tangential to the subject.

I tried to be even-handed in my response, showing both sides of the dispute, which the author of this article clearly isn't interested in. (I'm surprised that an article decrying the government's position of mostly ignoring the dangers of dihydrogen monoxide hasn't been penned.)

@geowrian: Ah. Good point. I haven't looked into the legal ramifications of violating their EULA, but I think that the situation can be resolved without resorting to the courts, and is.

DeadlyDad

If it's going to significantly damage their public image.... they will not pursue. The money they lose in the long run will not be worth the money they gain from prosecuting.

Creative actually made it quite clear from the start they knew they had the legal right to take action...

The difference in this case is that we own the rights to the materials that you are distributing.

So no...the "core argument" is not the misappropriation of intellectual property and what follows.

The argument it is rather one of a company's PR in light of their negligent product support and what the consumer can do about it.

ParJoe

Thanks for the informative post. However, I would like to note two issues with these statements...

1) The features weren't really "locked" since they came with them originally. The items were purchased with the presumption of certain features. Those features were provided. Then those features were removed. Does a company, regardless of whatever EULA they make, have the right to remove/lock existing, promoted, features? Legally, I think they would be in a tough spot trying to win that argument. Other companies with similar EULAs have put that clause in there before and have highly skilled law teams, but it's never (to the best of my knowledge) been invoked so it's legality is questionable. Typically with stuff like this, the legal teams write very restrictive EULA regardless of what is actually legal and hope they can get whatever they can to stick, or at least use the EULA clauses as a threat to deter people from trying.

2) As stated in my earlier post, you almost always purchase hardware, not license it. Once you purchase it, you own it. Modifying it may invalidate software licenses or warranties, but it's not illegal. To take your example, I have an old MSI K8T Neo2 FIR motherboard. It only had 2 SATA ports. A slightly more expensive version is nearly identical but has 4 SATA ports. The 2 port version had holes and traces for the other 2 SATA ports, but no connector. If I solder SATA connectors onto those ports, I am not violating any law. I'm an idiot for soldering my mobo due to a lack of SATA ports, and I killed all warranties and support rights, but it's my hardware (legally) and I'm free to do that under the law.

geowrian

True, reverse engineering the drivers violates the EULA. However, violating the EULA only invalidates his license. You can't arrest or sue somebody for violating the EULA of any software. If, in addition to violating the EULA, you commit a crime or other offense that you can be sued for, that's another issue. Reverse engineering by itself is not illegal in any country or state that I'm aware of. It can invalidate your software license, but that's it.

geowrian

The core arguement here is the misappropriation of intellectual property, whether or not the company had the right to take action to protect their property, and if the punishment was appropriate to the crime.

sqeakytoy of the apocalypse

Sure the article was somewhat inflammatory, but the 'power of the press' is often the only recourse a consumer has in the face of unfair business tactics.

Either way, people put out independent drivers for older hardware all the time. The drivers are usually better than the companies' own drivers and improve latent functionality.

Creative just got the rug pulled out from one of their tactics this time and they're back-peddling trying to avoid a PR fiasco.

ParJoe

jaximflash

test

Veracity_Inexcusable

It made a lot of sense.

strider_mt2k

Software is a very different story and is being debated in courts around the country right now. Even when software is claimed to be licensed, if it, and I quote, "appears" to be a sale, then it's a sale and not a license. Certain restrictions fall into place, but generally, that's how it's being looked at right now.

To bring this back on topic, the question here is did he violate the EULA when he made the drivers? If so, he could have violated his license agreement. If he's redistributing that and it violates Creative's copyrights (i.e. he reverse-engineered it or stole their code), then it could be copyright infringement. However, fair-use could be claimed as a defense and it would be hard to determine who would win. All-in-all, it makes Creative look very bad and they have very little to no legal case against him unless they can show he stole their code or otherwise violated their copyrights.

geowrian

Mr. O'Shaughnessy.

I have one simple statement to say in your approach to bilk customers out of more money for Vista functionality and your cease-and-desist letter in an attempt to shut down a good and proper individual's work that has restored proper functionality that should have existed regardless of Operating Systems.

When a customer purchases a product, it is expected to have functional updates that will work 100% with new products such as Vista. Failure to adhere to quality service standards will result in a very serious depreciation of CreativeLabs' stock due to consumer demand dropping over time.

Competition is what guarantees quality, and I daresay, attempting to force consumers to pay out the wazoo for proper, full functionality in their soundcards on Vista regardless of make or generation, is a violation against that American ideal of competition. In case you don't understand, competition from people providing free updates and sources - and yes, donations are VOLUNTARY, they could get those unofficial driver updates without having to donate - and if you want to guarantee that your company is truly fair and quality-based, you'd be wise to back off.

Those who harm the essence of American ideals that brought us to prominence on the international stage should not belong in the country regardless - that is, rampant capitalism (the act of bilking money out of consumers at every conceivable corner regardless of ethics or morals) will eventually drive the United States of America straight into the fucking ground, long after our political system has turned tits-up.

And to say, my simple statement is: You, sir, are a dick.

Get out of my country. I do not want to see an individual such as you having contributed small or large to this fine nation's ultimate demise - instead, why don't you go fuck over China?

Signed,
NKato

NKato

What it all comes down to is this: If the drivers he wrote contain copyrighted code, then, yes, he is distributing them illegally, whether or not he is making money at it. If, on the other hand, they were 'black boxed', then Creative Labs doesn't legally have a leg to stand on, the precedent having been set by Compaq 26 years ago. (Update: Apparently, the EULA for the drivers forbids reverse engineering, so the above arguments don't hold. What he did was illegal. Period.)

As for what Creative Labs should do about this situation? Personally, I think that they should recognize that he could be a valuable resource, and either a) hire him outright, (either on a contract basis, or full salary) to update, or help update, their current XP drivers to work with Vista, or b) pay him a set amount for the source code, with the understanding that he will not write any more drivers. Officially adding his drivers to their catalog would certainly make their customers feel better supported, in either case.

The letter that he received wasn't a draconian 'cease-and-desist' threat in any way; Mr. O'Shaughnessy was simply doing his job of stating his company's position and what their view of the situation was, and what they wanted Daniel_K to do about it. Unfortunately for the Weekly World News wannabe who wrote this inflammatory article, there is a decided lack of soap opera drama in the correspondence between Daniel and Dale (the forum moderator). While he obviously wasn't happy about it, Daniel agreed to do as Creative Labs asked. They also allowed him to release the Audigy Vista Support Pack, and are currently discussing the legality/precedence (my assumption) of allowing him to receive donations for it.

I can also understand Creative Labs' position regarding locked features; it is a common tactic in most industries to, instead of creating products for all budgets from scratch, design a single, high-end product and remove features that people might not need, thus allowing the consumer to pick the feature set that meets their needs & budget without incurring extra R&D costs for the company. (Ever seen a circuit board that was only partially populated, but had clear markings indicating where more components would sit? How about the dozens of variations of Vista? It's the same idea.)

If you wish to follow along, may I suggest that you bookmark these 'last post' links for Daniel_K and Dale-CL.

DeadlyDad

When will you all get it and finally go elsewhere and put these Asses out of business?

5h17h34d

sqeakytoy of the apocalypse

Let's say I use that bugger to buff up my Atra. Am I violating an implied agreement with Gillette to buy expensive blades, just because I bought the razor as a bundle? And, if they stop making those old shavers, am I required to buy a Fusion, even if my old blades can still scrape off stubble?

Did I buy or license the razor/printer/sound card? Am I obligated to use them the way their manufacturer decides even if there's an alternative?

Have we changed fundamental rules of possession?

HKLV

A software company comes out with a program to... lets say, rip a dvd to a hard drive. This program is available in 2 versions, one is free the other sold for $50. Now the programs are identical with the exception of how much they can do, ie, the removal of all the copy protection and psa's, the formats that it can encode, the speed that encodes. The freeware version will still allow the basic ripping and encoding, but at lower resolutions and slower speeds, and it has to be the whole dvd, no exceptions.

Fast forward to some ambitious young programmer that loves using the program, and comes up with a string of code that will allow the freeware version to do all that the retail version does, and even adds divx to the codex list. He then makes this "patch" available to the public freely, although he does put a little button there to allow for donations for all the time he invested in developing the code.

Is this stealing?

sqeakytoy of the apocalypse

scarbrtj

BigMoneyMike indeed.

Hamm Beerger

So it's not like they're doing the consumer a favor by cutting costs on the chip's development by putting it in lower end products.(if that is actually what they're doing).

However, I do understand the desire to avoid that mob mentality without further information. This story has been covered elsewhere and it's clear the company has put out inadequate drivers for their product.

Without making further assumptions, you have to ask why they wouldn't put out a suitable driver fix.

ParJoe

I for one will continue to purchase their products, and stand behind them in their handling of the situation. They could have been a hell of a lot more hard-nosed about it, including involving lawyers. It's obvious by the email that this is not their first request to this "hero" to cease and desist.

And while he is only requesting donations, any monetary reimbursement for distributing software developed from any companies software is wrong, unless it's open-source, without permission.

GC736

sqeakytoy of the apocalypse

AlanIn4D

Veracity_Inexcusable

I don't know enough about this particular case to condemn Creative out of hand - nor do I suspect do most of the rabid attackers that have jumped on Creative in this forum. But imagine the following scenario:

- company spends millions of dollars developing a new integrated chipset for their products;
- they decide to include this chipset in all their products, both low-end and high-end, thus ensuring that they have sufficient volume to bring the unit cost of the new chipset done to the same as the previous generation;
- however they still have to cover the development costs, so who pays ? Not the buyer of the low-end products, as they probably don't care about new features;
- so instead they use software to lock the new features out for the low-end. Those who want the new features pay more for a high-end product, and thus end up paying for their development costs. Sounds fair to me ...
- but then some smart arse comes along and unlocks those features across all cards. Now you can get everything for the price of the cheapest card. So what does the tech company do to ensure they cover their development costs ? Put all their prices up? Kill the low end card? Develop different chipsets for different price points (which will cost more)? Add physical hardware lockouts on the board (which again will cost money)? None of these choices benefit the consumer.

Now I have no idea whether something like this is what is going in the Creative case ... but they do talk about Daniel_K adding functionality to products that were never intended to have that functionality. In the end, price differentiation is the flip side of product differentiation, and until we all have the same budgets and the same requirements then I think the consumer benefits from such differentiation.

khoadley

SET SOUND=C:\PROGRA~1\CREATIVE\AUDIOAPP
SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 H5 P330 T6
SET MIDI=SYNTH:1 MAP:E MODE:0

SET CREATIVE=SUCK ASS!

CribbageLeft

It's obvious they're more interested protecting their own investment then supporting a dysfunctional product for their consumers.

ParJoe

spaceman37

I had a great SoundBlaster Audigy card that no longer worked under Windows Vista, so I gave it away. What a waste!

Brian Sexton

sqeakytoy of the apocalypse

Likewise, the Creative drivers include stuff licensed from Dolby and others. When you buy a Creative sound card, part of the money you spend goes to Dolby. That's why the full driver set isn't freely available.

My guess is that Creative actually does not care if Daniel_K redistributes their drivers; in fact, they're probably secretly happy that he's doing it. But when he posts about it on the Creative forum, that's got to get the attention of Dolby and the others who aren't getting paid each time Daniel_K's driver is downloaded.

fredbarnes

Nicely said :)

LittleBigPlaneteer

The fact that Creative stopped developing drivers for legacy products is a pretty shoddy way of getting repeat buyers, so they should really work on that though.

sqeakytoy of the apocalypse

Is it really illegal to create software like this? I know it happens with a lot of other devices but I never hear about anything being illegal, discouraged I'm sure, but not outside the bounds of the law.

Regardless, why does Creative have to be dicks? They should hire him. The only reason they have to not support this man is because he's not in their plans to make money, in which case I wouldn't give them any of mine ever again.

Absent Blue

8@5+@rd5

tegronin

Right-o...Unfortunatly.

No matter, At the moment ASUS Computers currently makes the best Sound Card for PCI-E slots anyhow.

Matter of a fact it has the highest frequency range of any current PCI-E slot sound card you can buy. Not to mention that in the near future they will impliment one of the richest sounding card ever made.. IMO ASUS is the very best and the NEW Leader in the market.

I have a Creative X-FI Fatality Champion series, ya know the one with the front output...

Well this little baby is gonna get replaced today, after reading this crapola.

I have since creative could not keep up withe drivers for Vista, been highly dissapointed by their decesions, and Like HP I believe, tehy are just out to make a fast buck selling newer products. getting back to what HP did, i read right here on these boards. HP refused to provide drivers for a Scanner/Printer to customers simply because it was 3-4 years old, and told a customer that there was only one way to get the printer to work, but scanner and other items attached would cease to function...

De Ja Vu...Greed is evil.

Wonder why I have chose then name I have here...
Simply Read above.

Veracity_Inexcusable

Idiots >.>

GloStix

Yet Auzentech is now tapping Creative's technology in their latest soundcards. Hmmm

LittleBigPlaneteer

You want Phil to openly bring up licensing him in a forum thread rather than making private correspondence about licensing? Do you honestly believe Creative is wrong for protecting their own IP and licensing here? Read the quote. They support his efforts, as long as it's within legal ground. How is that any different from any other company with intellectual property? Gizmodo needs a serious lesson in business, and sadly many here do too.

Should we just copy and paste Gizmodo's articles, and anything else that's copywritten and put our names under it without any legal permission to do so? Would Gawker not come down on people who do that? It's essentially the same damn thing. Daniel_K was doing something illegal. You can make him a hero, but that doesn't mean he was correct.

Shame on you guys

LittleBigPlaneteer

The Razer Barracuda or Auzentech cards have been better for a long time--and they have DTS Interactive and Dolby Digital live (i.e. they encode DTS or AC3 5.1 real-time)... something that's been auspiciously absent from any Creative offerings.

scarbrtj

Glupidio VanHosen

[i]Well done sir!

I've always been a user and fan of the Creative line of PC audio products. I've used your sound cards from the original soundblaster all the way through to my current card an Audigy SE (on XP, so it works without a third party driver). I've recommended your products to my not-so-PC-literate friends, I've put them in machines I've built for people and even given one as a gift. I spurned the Apple kool-aid and loved my Creative Zen Muvo, then Micro.

And those many, many dollars spent are going to be the last ones you ever get from me. Your company has never been the best for driver support, but you usually did the right thing. This time you've not only chosen to shaft your customers with what I'm told (no Vista, so not experienced it personally) are some shoddy Vista drivers, but you've chosen to wave your big legal stick at a one-man-band trying to take up YOUR slack. Shameful behaviour which I'll no longer support by buying your products. Congratulations, you turned a repeat customer of many years into a consumer who actively avoids your product. Bravo.

Bowen Sorby-Firth
Former Creative customer.[/i]

NCLivingBrit

lafond66

But the intenets are anything but politically correct or logical. It's too easy to just jump on the hate train when they see 'injustice'. Both sides of the story won't get looked at, that's how internet vigilantism works.

.. it's retarded.

wooties

Also, I think its pretty arrogant to assume that we dont know anything about business.

bigMoneyMIKE

kzooguy

I suppose none of you know about intellectual property and licensing huh? Please take a lesson before you throw your hate around

LittleBigPlaneteer

Dear sir,

Please add my e.mail to the growing chorus of consumers who vigorously object to the driver maintenance and distribution practices of Creative.

After having read of the latest moves on Gizmodo of Creative's part to stifle 3rd party development, it has now become clear to me that Creative cannot be trusted to support their products after purchase, if a new version or service pack to a Windows product is released.

In my career capacity as an IT technician, I am often solicited for advice on the purchase of personal and business computers. Sound hardware is a relatively low or nonexistent priority in the minds of most consumers and businesses, so for those I will advise them to stick with RealTek embedded into motherboards. For the high end consumers, I will recommend Turtle Beach.

I suggest you have your company reevaluate its business practices so that you learn to befriend your customers instead of trying to manipulate them.

jcy

jcy

I am so sick of these greedy fucking cocksuckers overtaking corporate America.

bigMoneyMIKE

AlphaUltima

Without knowing in detail exactly what Daniel_K's drivers did for what products, and how that compares with those products' features under XP, it isn't easy to say who is on the moral high ground here. If the drivers merely enable under vista functions that were already there under XP, then Daniel_K is unquestionably the "programming hero" Giz seems to think he is. But if the drivers unlock additional functionality that were never meant to be in the products are originally purchase - and that is what Creative's message seems to imply - then that is a whole different kettle of fish ...

Using common hardware/silicon across a wide range of products is a way of saving money and lowering the average cost, which benefits all consumers. Then using software to enable or disable various features at different price points makes it possible to produce cheaper card for the entry level.

Regardless, this isn't a simple subject, and without more info I'm not convinced that Creative is necessarily quite the villain they're being portrayed as. Let's have some balance here - knee-jerk nutjobs need not apply.

khoadley

ripfire

obis666

Either way, I'll never buy another product from them.

ParJoe

lianna_g

if i own a sound card, do i not own the rights to make that sound card work? Also, by not developing the extra features themselves, they are not losing money.

the fact is that It would cost creative money to make software to get the cards to run on vista. There probably isnt any way to make the money back. however, if they dont make new software, then people would be forced into buying new cards, and might wind up just buying another creative cards providing they were happy enough with their original card. So rather than losing money, they are making an attempt to make even more money than they normally would. Danile_k knew how to make drivers though and got the card to work. He also threw in a few extra things so that people could get even more bang for their long ago spent buck. As for the money he is making...its donations. Not "donations" but rather, donations. You dont have to give him money to download it. You can if you want however. I dont consider this a sleezy way to make money...if you do thats your own deal...but i dont see how its bad.

jrghoull

I tend to be of the opinion that once Creative sold the product to the consumer--they sold it.

But could this be another case of corporate planned product obsolescence? I might posit "they don't make 'em like they used to," sadly, they've always made 'em like that.

dnai

I had to sell off one of my favorite MP3 players a year ago just because they *wouldn't* code Vista compatible drivers for it. (HINT: They wanted people to upgrade to their new line of players).

The solution they did offer required someone to install the software on a secondary XP system, which let's face it, if you're on your own and don't have a lot of spare money, you are not going to own.

I think there should be a law stating that if a manufacturer decides to abandon support for a particular platform or fixes for features that were originally supposed to work that *anyone* should be allowed to develop software (free or otherwise) to fix the problem.

If I were to be harsher I would make it compulsory for Creative to be legally obliged to fix their own damn players, but I'll take what I can get.

Companies like this really need to get better PR people..events such as the above do nothing to improve the public perception of Creative.

legacye

They should also offer him a position in the company as well for being so talented and motivated.

strider_mt2k

Does anyone know where you can download this unofficial driver?

jaximflash

jigsawfallingintoplace

By your own logic, Intel would be within their rights to force people to stop over clocking, as doing so ignores the SKUing, as you put it, and enables features (running faster) that weren't supposed to be there.

Or, keeping it software, Microsoft would have the right to shutdown, say, NullRiver for their Connect360 program. Connect360 allows people to stream media from a Mac to a XBox, a feature that is SKUed only for Windows.

Dunny0, ELE Hopeful

LOL, no he isnt. Fact of the matter is, this isnt the defintion of stealing, its the defintion of adapting, which, to my very limited understanding, is not illegal. I'm with you on this gizmodo, this is just about selling new products.

@FilthyHarry:

they claim that hes stealing, when he isnt. they dont have an actual case imho (or they shouldnt) so my bet is that they would use underhanded techniques to "win" the case (ie make him go broke with all the lawyer fees)

jrghoull

All they asked from me was the model of my speakers and my name and address. I had a new power thing in less than a week.

Digo

By enabling our technology and IP to run on sound cards for which it was not originally offered or intended, you are in effect, stealing our goods.

I'm no legal expert but I don't think this would hold up in court. As long as Daniel_K isn't using any code from Creative he isn't stealing anything, it's people who use his drivers with Creative products that are "stealing."

So really, it's probably users that Creative should be going after. But they know that would be a costly and futile effort, which explains why they're going after Daniel_K.

getgreg

The company for the longest time also ignored important things like sound quality at the expense of features (They had the most useless breakout boxes). I remember when early musicians would quickly learn how much sound would be lost when using a $300 creative setup. Their cards were only good for games because studios developed specifically for their code, but their technology has never been very good.

capitalass

mattbrown

mlvds

tek_nic

So don't pick on creative until you open your eyes and see that everyone else is doing the same.

bars

mcsurfer3393

First, a lot of manufacturers SKU their products solely based on the software and software-enabled features that they provide in the box. Someone coming along and ignoring this SKUing and allowing advanced features/software to work on SKUs that they should not function on costs the company money. If you, as a consumer, know you can buy they cheap sound card and download drivers for $30 and download software that gives it the same features as an $80 card, then you will buy the cheap one. Creative just lost $50. They spend a lot of money on software development and deserve to recoup that money. The developer here is truly enabling users to steal software, in much the same way that Chinese vendors do.

Second is the request for donations. Many developers hide behind donation requests as a "soft" way to make money. Any money this dev received is payment for theft of software and that is wrong. If he was the hero you all are calling him, he would have asked for nothing, just like the majority of open source developers.

Seems to me that Creative was very nice in this case. The letter infers that they already told him he could keep developing software as long as he maintained the SKU limitations they imposed in their software design. That is their right and I don't see why you all think they are off-base. Also, they did not sic their lawyers on the guy. You gotta respect that. Instead, they sent a very polite message to him saying to stop.

This is the developers own fault. Stop treating him like Robin Hood. He could have done the right thing and didn't.

shangreer

Right:
Legally, he is absolutely in the wrong re-distributing your content and asking for a donation. (But do you really have to be dicks about it?)

Daniel_K
Wrong:
Probably would have worked out a bit better if you asked for permission to re-distribute their code and provide backward compatibility for their hardware.

Right:
You are the hero of every Vista using Creative device owner. All four of us love you.

Monty

pure and simple

robbo

Who's a good alternative on the sound card realm?

strider_mt2k

Funny how the consumer is always the loser.

vagrant

CarbonatedWater

DirkusMaximus

[us.creative.com] << PR Contacts page

Daniel_K is not costing you anything. He's simply allowing your user base to continue using your products until they get enough scratch together to buy a better sound card. By doing this, you're turning off your user base and they'll be more likely to try to look elsewhere for a sound card or they'll just use a newer mobo with integrated sound instead.

I'm sure you can work out SOME kind of arrangement where your "IP" is protected, AND your users can still use your products. How about this: Settle your differences with Daniel_K, pay him some kind of reward for his work on the drivers, he signs an NDA, an agreement that he will no longer distribute the drivers, and signs the rights to them over to you, then after cleaning them up and QAing them YOU distribute the drivers. Hell, seeing as he put all that effort into the driver package, maybe he'd work out well as an employee. Had you ever thought about that? That makes a lot more business sense to me.

I mean, how much sense does this sentence make: "Stop doing free work for our company! We don't want you making our products work!" Sounds pretty stupid to me.

DirkusMaximus

Zlevee

mcjohnson

Let's be real here folks, Creative should look at this as an huge opportunity. How about this:

Dear Daniel,

Thank you for showing such enthusiastic interest in the interoperability and functionality we at Creative hope to bring to market with our products. Our team has some concerns regarding the distribution methods and supportability of your updates, but we're more interested in making sure the updates can be sufficiently tested, distributed through more official channels, and supported for the long term. In this regard, I'm asking our head of developmenet and human resources to contact you regarding an employment or consulting arrangement with Creative. If this interests you, we look forward to working with you to further develop the updates you've recently released.

Regards,
~ ~ ~ ~ ~

zanella

FilthyHarry

poshaughnessy@creativelabs.com

FSugino

poshaughnessy@creativelabs.com

DirkusMaximus