However, there is a comment from Creative Labs personel concerning this.Creative threatens developer over home-brewed Vista drivers
Fans say 'give the man a job'
By Richard Thurston → More by this authorPublished Monday 31st March 2008 16:07 GMT
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Creative Labs has enraged customers by threatening a developer with legal action after he wrote drivers that allowed its products to run smoothly on Vista.
Soundcard maker Creative accused the developer, known only as daniel_k, of theft and warned him not to infringe its intellectual property.
Daniel_k has created a number of drivers which make Creative's soundcards work smoothly on PCs running Windows Vista. He had posted a link to them on a forum on Creative's website and many users had downloaded them.
Without his drivers, users say, Creative's soundcards cause Vista machines to crash or features to fail.
This is despite the fact that Creative markets its sound cards as "Vista-compatible".
But Creative has not taken kindly to Daniel_k's efforts and has accused the developer with breaching its intellectual property.
The company posted a statement on the forum on Friday and removed all the developer's messages.
In the statement, Creative's vp of corporate communications Phil O'Shaughnessy addressed daniel_k personally. He wrote: "Where we do have a problem is when technology and IP owned by Creative... are made to run on other products for which they are not intended.
"We own the rights to the materials that you are distributing. By enabling our technology and IP to run on soundcards for which it was not originally offered or intended, you are, in effect, stealing our goods.
"To be clear, we are asking you to respect our legal rights in this matter and cease all further unauthorised distribution of our technology and IP."
The developer backed down almost immediately. Posting a reply the same day, he wrote: "I do know what is right, so I'll stop developing and distributing Creative softwares and drivers."
But he was clearly upset. "The funny thing is that you are faster "protecting" your technologies and intellectual properties than providing improved drivers and softwares for your customers.
"You purposedly [sic] crippled and ruined the Audigy/Live! (Emu10kx) and the Audigy LS/SE/Value/Live!24-bit (P17) drivers for Windows Vista.
"This just proves you don't really care about what your customers... think about you."
Other forum users rallied behind the embattled developer, saying his drivers had made Creative's sound cards work better.
One wrote: "He offered a service you guys can't/won't, and in so [doing] made a lot of your customers happy about their product again. Now you wanna wipe him out and keep him silent by threatening about legal actions. This is a beyond retarded, shame on you, shame on you."
Forum posters have described Creative's stance as a massive PR disaster, saying they should be giving Daniel_k a job, not threatening him with legal action.
At the time of writing, Creative was unavailable to offer any comment beyond its initial statement. ®
Following the release of the drivers and the start of the incident Creative Labs posted on their boards with the following message:
Link for reference and further concerns
As you can see from viewing the post the replies to it were less then polite concerning Creative Labs, it's ability, heritage, lineage, parentage and other niceities.Daniel_K:
We are aware that you have been assisting owners of our Creative sound cards for some time now, by providing unofficial driver packages for Vista that deliver more of the original functionality that was found in the equivalent XP packages for those sound cards. In principle we don't have a problem with you helping users in this way, so long as they understand that any driver packages you supply are not supported by Creative. Where we do have a problem is when technology and IP owned by Creative or other companies that Creative has licensed from, are made to run on other products for which they are not intended. We took action to remove your thread because, like you, Creative and its technology partners think it is only fair to be compensated for goods and services. The difference in this case is that we own the rights to the materials that you are distributing. 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. When you solicit donations for providing packages like this, you are profiting from something that you do not own. If we choose to develop and provide host-based processing features with certain sound cards and not others, that is a business decision that only we have the right to make.
Although you say you have discontinued your practice of distributing unauthorized software packages for Creative sound cards we have seen evidence of them elsewhere along with donation requests from you. We also note in a recent post of yours on these forums, that you appear to be contemplating the release of further packages. To be clear, we are asking you to respect our legal rights in this matter and cease all further unauthorized distribution of our technology and IP. In addition we request that you observe our forum rules and respect our right to enforce those rules. If you are in any doubt as to what we would consider unacceptable then please request clarification through one of our forum moderators before posting.
Phil O'Shaughnessy
VP Corporate Communications
Creative Labs Inc.
Forum Moderator
Creative Labs
Now, the whole issue at hand here is that Creative Labs doesn't want daniel_k distributing these drives he made because they provide usability to a buggy OS allowing it to correctly allow hardware to function. You would think it would be a good thing for them right? Well it is, unless you realize that Creative Wants users locked in an upgrade cycle since they're not really supporting the cards or drivers or customers.
How can we tell that this is the case? Because one Creative Labs member has decided to put us in our place concerning our right to be able to use our hardware with an operating system and have it work right.
Link
I think this is their kind way of telling us to go fuck ourselves for wanting working hardware.'Ok, I see a lot of negativity here. Please lets cut the bad talk. We try our best to get working drivers and sure we might not be the best coders but god knows you're really only paying for the low end cards anyway, if people want the professional stuff they would be getting the true pro stuff, its a get what you pay for thing, so don't complain so much, we'll get the drivers working eventually.'
Now the real bitch in this situation is every one of the cards that daniel_k wrote the new vista drivers for were marked on the packaging as Vista Ready or Vista Compliant.
And yet every one of those cards has failed to be properly utilized by Vista, the native drivers in it screwing up badly and the drivers(even after multiple driver updates) from Creative Labs are equally buggy and horrible.
I can say pretty much I'm done with Creative Labs. They use to be a damned good company. Now? Well to paraphrase: If you want to buy the good stuff then people will get the true good stuff. In other words, if you want something good find another vender.
:thumbsup