Creative Vista Driver Modder Speaks Out 318
hol writes sends a followup on Creative Labs shutting down the modder who made their drivers work with Vista. Wired is running daniel_k's response to the contretemps."
HOLY MACRO!
Idiots. (Score:1, Insightful)
Kawakami probably should have not solicited donations, but that's the only questionable thing he's done here. He should make out a cashier's check for the total amount of donations he's received, mail it to Creative Labs, and refuse any further donations. That should shut them up.
Re:Idiots. (Score:5, Insightful)
must be the new 'american way'; to reward companies for bad behavior (multiple times over) with a CASHIER'S CHECK.
(sigh).
no, he should NOT send money to the company that caused the problem. good grief, man, what are you thinking?
Do NOT buy Creative Sound Cards (Score:5, Insightful)
This is not a problem with Vista, it is a problem with Creative if they do that.
So, do not buy Creative sound cards and let them go out of business.
Modding closed source can be troublesome (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Idiots. (Score:5, Insightful)
Normally I'd agree. But why should I lose features in Vista because Creative decided that the card I already bought shouldn't work in a new OS? I can only think it is to encourage people to buy new cards. That's slimey.
Re:Is this real? - Umm yes (Score:5, Insightful)
Drivers in (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Is this real? - Umm yes (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Idiots. (Score:3, Insightful)
IANAL, but there are limits (even today) as to what a company can do to STOP someone from applying their mods to works that are for sale.
if he 'sells' only his time and effort via the patch, that should be fine. if he includes the whole binary (which isn't his) then that's not ok.
but in terms of him making money on the effort he applied, what's wrong with that? if he sells only a patch he should be fine. the 'dont look at our code' is not enforceable. I believe its fair use.
of course, the actual law isn't important; what IS important is that creative is a SCUMBAG COMPANY and will threaten people just to get them to stop, law or no law.
creative: I will never ever ever buy your gear again; and I will try to influence all my peers and companies not to buy your stuff either. I hope you reap lots of what you sowed from this stunt of yours.
Re:Naïveté (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Is this real? - Umm yes (Score:3, Insightful)
No, the real moral is to stay away from both Creative AND Vista.
Re:Is this real? - Umm yes (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Idiots. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Is this real? - Umm yes (Score:1, Insightful)
Analogy (Score:5, Insightful)
This is really all Creative were doing, attempting to force enough of a difference between bottem end products and older products and the new top of the range technologies to ensure sales stay up. You cannot really blame them this this commercial decision.
what I take exception to is the fact that they have made none of this clear to the consumers. and worse, they have actively degraded the functionality of hardware people have already paid for by means of drivers for a new operation system.
In other words it is as though you purchased a car hifi and used it for a year in your Ford. Then you purchased an Mercedes and fitted the same car hifi and found the audio output was at half the resolution in your new car. If you have wanted to spend the money and pay for double the resolution then nobody would of batted an eyelid - but you would reasonably expect that the original performace would of been preserved. At the very least you would of expected some notification or warning.
And thats why Creative are in hot water - apart from their shockingly rude and arrogant behaviour that is.
Re:Is this real? - Umm yes (Score:5, Insightful)
Or they are just lawsuit happy jerks. That is a nonzero possibility as well. I thought it was funny that the Creative exec was basically saying "It's our right to release broken drivers if we want to". Clearly Creative knows a lot about broken drivers.
Creative Alternatives (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Idiots. (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not sure how we ended up down the path where just because a mod happens electronically it's suddenly possible for the manufacturer to win the same argument. It's important to note that he's in fact not "profiting off (Creative's) IP", he is actually profiting from his addition to their product, just like car modders of days gone by...
Re:Fair usage and licensing? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Is this real? - Umm yes (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm hoping that China, filesharers and hackers like Daniel violate our IP laws so thoroughly and ceaselessly as to make them useless. At that point, we can start thinking sensibly how to approach the issue.
And don't tell me that innovation will disappear if there were no IP laws. That is simply not true.
Building a new machine (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Modding closed source can be troublesome (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Idiots. (Score:5, Insightful)
Because you're Creative's bitch.
Remember how we used to buy and "own" things? Well, now apparently companies are claiming the right to tell us how we may, or may not, use their products after "buying" them, even with physical hardware. Since the number of people who care about things like this enough to stop buying shiny gadgets is minuscule, I see no reason why this tactic shouldn't work.
After all, it's their product, why shouldn't they have complete control over how you "consume" it - there's money to be made, after all.
Re:Naïveté (Score:3, Insightful)
However, it's now apparent in this case (and by this stage) that it wasn't simply a case of Creative being blase or cheap about fixing the bugs. On the contrary, they quite clearly and deliberately *didn't* want them fixed.
You know, I might have defended Creative on the basis that the guy modified their own drivers and got them to work on all soundcards. This would give non-Creative owners of other cards unpaid access to Creative's work, and possibly certain features (code or patents) which was licensed- i.e. not owned- by Creative for use with their cards alone. Possibly some of the features were only licensed (and paid for) for use with certain cards.
But that's the charitable view. In truth, Creative's behaviour smacks of deliberately breaking their older hardware under Vista so that people are forced to upgrade. I'm unclear whether they actually introduced deliberate bugs into the Vista drivers, but if so, this is reprehensible. I'd also be interested to find out how legal this is under various jurisdictions- probably 100% in the US (where they can get away with a 90 day warranty on a brand new laptop), not so sure about other countries, particularly within the EU.
Looking at it from another angle... (Score:5, Insightful)
But things have changed; the iPod has made Creative's portable music player largely irrelevant - and on-board sound is a standard feature of motherboards these days.
So what is poor Creative to do? They could take the honorable path; see that their market has dried up and either innovate in another market or close down their business. But no; they're used to getting those dollars coming in on a regular basis and decided to try something less-than-honorable.
But they got caught at it. Too bad; Creative is in a worse position now. Not only are they still faced with sharply declining revenues, they've also got a public relations nightmare to deal with too.
Couldn't happen to a more deserving bunch; here's payback for all those crappy drivers you dumped on your customers. Die in a fire, OK?
Re:Is this real? - Umm yes (Score:3, Insightful)
Driver issues are one of the primary reasons why people stay away from Linux. Why, precisely, should Vista be any different?
Because one of the major reasons Linux has driver problems is the refusal of the kernel developer to settle on a stable ABI so companies have something to develop for.
Re:Obvious. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Is this real? - Umm yes (Score:3, Insightful)
This is clear example of how market based principles do not always benefit consumers.
Re:Is this real? - Umm yes (Score:2, Insightful)
Part of the open source movement is transparency with code, and you certainly don't get there with binary drivers.
What happens when the vendor goes out of business, or decides not to continue support for your device for whatever reason? Where is your support then? Tech vendors die or are absorbed all the time. Do you want to be prevented from upgrading your system because the closed-source, binary driver cannot be updated? With an open-source driver anybody anywhere in the world can continue working on it. That's a tremendous amount of added value.
The only reason we don't have drivers for some pieces of hardware is the unwillingness of certain manufacturers to cooperate -- they hide behind binaries and refuse to work with the community. Only with binary drivers can a vendor decide to cripple the devices we bought just because we changed OS's.
Creative lost a customer today with this behavior.
Re:Is this real? (Score:5, Insightful)
Reversing isn't illegal in Brazil at all (Score:4, Insightful)
What I did wrong
(...)
Reversing ALchemy was also wrong, I know. But I reiterate, what is the point of improving ALchemy and changing for it, when it requires an improved driver? It was my protest against Creative.
Actually things run even deeper. Copying stuff for personal use isn't illegal in Brazil, even if you don't have a license. It can be anything, books, movies, software, etc.
Re:Is this real? - Umm yes (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Is this real? - Umm yes (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Is this real? - Umm yes (Score:4, Insightful)
lets assume that creative is not the 'bad guy' here (just follow along, for now).
and lets assume that creative made business deals with the rotton stinking dolby-labs (yeah, they suck too) and DTS guys for their xp product offering. and lets assume that they chose to CHEAP OUT and not renew those deals for vista, on certain hardware models.
how can DTS or dolby sue creative on something creative had NO PART IN DOING??
creative did not violate any licensing. THEY did not distribute new functionality that was 'not paid for' to the industry groups.
why the fuck should they care what some user does once the card (and fees, btw) have been already paid for?
IANAL, but it seems creative is harmless here; the driver modder did not involve creative directly and so ANY issues at all would be between the industry groups (dolby, dts) and the driver modder.
creative clearly knows this. this isn't about license fees. this is about having egg on their face when the TRUTH comes out about wanting their business model (lame as it might be) to try to get more money from customers by making them re-buy hardware.
that was the ONLY issue. the licensing was a distraction. nice try creative, but no cigar.
their true colors were shown. they want you to re-buy hardware simply because they have run out of ideas! its just that simple.
don't buy this 'license fees have to be paid!' bullshit. its a smokescreen. its all about squeezing more 'upgrade money' from users and nothing more.
highly dispicable behavior. I'll never buy creative gear again. and I will take ever opportunity to convey that concept (with reasoning behind it) to every shop I work for (I often do sysadmin work and am consulted for machine purchases and hardware specs).
Re:Is this real? - Umm yes (Score:3, Insightful)