Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments
Search

News for nerds, stuff that matters

Creative Vista Driver Modder Speaks Out

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday April 01, @04:38PM
from the no-good-deed-goes-unpunished dept.
Censorship
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."

Related Stories

[+] Hardware: Creative Goes After Driver Modder 385 comments
FreedomFighter writes "Since the release of Windows Vista, Creative has promised their Sound Cards as being 'Vista Ready'. Unfortunately, as many unlucky customers did discover, this is not true. What the users actually found were buggy, feature crippled drivers. Creative insisted that features such as Decoding of Dolby® Digital and DTS(TM) signals and DVD-Audio which worked fine in WinXP, would not work on windows Vista. With Creative releasing less than one new driver a year, things seemed bleak. Fortunately, a talented user, Daniel_K, was recently able to 'fix' many of the drivers, enabling the incompatible features and also fixing many bugs. Just today Creative has decided to put a stop to this. They removed all links to his modified drivers, and banned several users who were posting links to the now banned drivers."
Firehose:Creative stops developer of working Vista Drivers by hol (89786)
[+] Creative Backs Down on Vista Driver Debacle 227 comments
In the wake of last week's driver debacle, Creative has finally decided to back down for PR purposes. Modder Daniel_K, author of the offending Vista drivers, has had his posts on the Creative forums reinstated. According to Creative the move was to avoid infringing on other company's IP. "Daniel_K is incensed by Creative. 'They publicly threatened me, just to show their arrogance,' he told El Reg by email. He told us that Creative contacted him on a chat session. 'They were sarcastic, ironic and asked me if I wanted something from them, as if I were expecting something,' he wrote. 'It was my protest against them and would like to see how far it would go.'"
[+] Hardware: $90 Asus Sound Card Whips Creative's Best 346 comments
EconolineCrush writes "Sound card giant Creative caught plenty of flak for its recent driver debacle, and has long been criticized for bullying competitors and stifling innovation. But few have been willing to compete with Creative head-on, allowing the company to milk its X-Fi audio processor for more than two and a half years. Now the SoundBlaster has a new challenger in the form of Asus' $90 Xonar DX, which delivers much better sound quality than the X-Fi, PCI Express connectivity, and support for real-time Dolby Digital Live encoding. The Xonar can even emulate the latest EAX positional audio effects, providing the most complete competition to the X-Fi available on the market."
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.

Creative Vista Driver Modder Speaks Out 25 Comments More | Login | Reply /

 Full
 Abbreviated
 Hidden
More | Login | Reply
Keybindings Beta
Q W E
A S D
R P M
T G V
Loading... please wait.

  • fp? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 01, @04:39PM (#22934390)
    what is everybody busy reading the article or something?

  • Is this real? (Score:5, Funny)

    by bennomatic (691188) on Tuesday April 01, @04:41PM (#22934420) Homepage

    I never know whether to bother with /. on April 1. The fact that TFA is on Wired is no help. April fools is no longer funny.

    • Re:Is this real? - Umm yes (Score:5, Funny)

      by Finallyjoined!!! (1158431) on Tuesday April 01, @04:46PM (#22934450)
      The guy tried to fix the drivers for Creative products, that worked in XP, but didn't work in Fista.

      Creative censored & censured him.

      Shame on Creative.

      Shame on Daniel for making Fista work :-)

      • Re:Is this real? - Umm yes (Score:5, Interesting)

        by kesuki (321456) on Tuesday April 01, @05:00PM (#22934648) Journal
        It's way at the bottom of TFA but
        "Alchemy: My last ALchemy release (1.00.08) was completely unlocked and could be used with any sound device from any vendor."

        So the reason why they shut him down was he released a version of their software that would enable advanced creative only (software) features to say, work on an integrated sound driver. His bad, and he did that as a result of creative 'removing' all links on their support forms to his (working) vista drivers.

        According to his words in TFA he's still modding but 'not the forbidden mods' that creative really was upset at him for doing.

        He's lucky he's in Brazil, I guess.

        • Re:Is this real? - Umm yes (Score:5, Insightful)

          by MightyMartian (840721) on Tuesday April 01, @04:54PM (#22934554) Journal
          So the real moral of the story is stay away from Creative.

            • Re:Is this real? - Umm yes (Score:5, Insightful)

              by MightyMartian (840721) on Tuesday April 01, @05:00PM (#22934640) Journal
              Well, as much as I despise Vista and Microsoft in general, they can't be faulted for some greedy hardware manufacturer trying to scam more money out of people that have already bought their stuff. It's part of the good faith agreement between consumer and manufacturer that the hardware, for a reasonable amount of time, will work on modern common operating systems.

                • Re:Is this real? - Umm yes (Score:5, Insightful)

                  by jandrese (485) <kensama@vt.edu> on Tuesday April 01, @05:26PM (#22934936) Homepage Journal
                  I thought they must be under some sort of contract restrictions with Microsoft (who is under restrictions from the media companies) that has harsh legal fines for enabling things like that. That's the only sane reason I can think of that Creative would do something like sue a guy who was pretty much fixing their drivers for free. Likely part of the contract is that they're not allowed to speak publicly about the restrictions in it, nor are they allowed to let third parties bypass them.

                  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.

      • Re:Is this real? (Score:5, Informative)

        by mikael (484) on Tuesday April 01, @05:10PM (#22934768)
        Wasn't Creative the company that refused to give ID Software any developer support at the time when ID Software was a startup company. As a result they refused to support Creative in any way whatsoever?

  • Do NOT buy Creative Sound Cards (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Buzz_Litebeer (539463) on Tuesday April 01, @04:45PM (#22934444) Journal
    Thats the solution. You have it from Creative's mouth. They purposefully are positioning themselves to cripple your hardware to make the actual cost of your card higher if you have Vista.

    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.

      • Creative Alternatives (Score:5, Insightful)

        by colinbrash (938368) on Tuesday April 01, @05:28PM (#22934950)
        Terratec and M-Audio both make quality sound cards, and I much, much prefer those companies to Creative.

        • Re:Do NOT buy Creative Sound Cards (Score:5, Interesting)

          by Dutch Gun (899105) on Tuesday April 01, @05:38PM (#22935082)
          Ok, I just had to chime in here... I happen to do audio development for a gaming company. Make no mistake, most on-board audio is absolute crap. The drivers very often have glitches/bugs, missing features, or simply emulate "hardware" features (badly) in the driver. Creative's X-Fi lineup is one of the few decent audio cards still available, and that's a pretty small percentage of our consumer base anyhow. Generally speaking, about 75% of our customers have on-board audio, with the remaining 25% scattered among add-on cards. The X-Fi has perhaps one or two percent of the total.

          That being said - the future is software processing anyhow. With multi-core machines being standard equipment on all new machines, it makes sense to simply devote part of a core to audio processing, and screw the hardware and the many, many troubles it causes audio programmers. Vista doesn't support audio hardware acceleration anymore (Creative wrote their own OpenAL pipeline to get around this). Our upcoming game will probably only support hardware acceleration on X-Fi class cards. Anything else, it's simply not worth it, and we'll switch to software mode.

          I'm not condoning Creative's actions by any means. It seems pretty obvious that they're a bit panicked about the tanking sales of PC audio hardware, and so are making idiots of themselves by irritating their few remaining customers. Stupid...

  • Modding closed source can be troublesome (Score:5, Insightful)

    by postbigbang (761081) on Tuesday April 01, @04:51PM (#22934514)
    Hardware makers, especially those that make drivers for their gear, don't understand a hacker's mentality, or even the rebuke they get from not listening to customers. I applaud the guy; did what he needed to get the Vista Not Ready gear working. They should hire him after they throw out their software contractor and their VP of whoever thought that killing the driver was a good idea.

  • Fair usage and licensing? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Bombula (670389) on Tuesday April 01, @04:53PM (#22934540)
    Can anyone elucidate the issues of fair usage and licensing as they apply to hardware? I'm assuming when you buy a piece of computer hardware you're not licensing it like you are with software, so you should be able to do with it whatever you please. But since it 'requires' software in order to run, then I can imagine how the issue gets a little murky. As an example, when I buy my car I expect to be able to use it however I please within the confines of the law - not how GM or Ford has licensed me to use it. And if I can find or write software that will control the car's hardware better and give me better performance, shouldn't I be able to use that software? Last I checked, there was no licensing/fair use law against overclocking, for example - even though overclocking is always done through software (bios).

    So while I understand Creative's beef about messing with their software, the reason this is a firestorm issue is that since the software in question is a driver the hardware becomes an inseparable part of the equation.

    And this leaves aside the whole other issue of crippling.

  • Drivers in (Score:5, Insightful)

    by slapout (93640) on Tuesday April 01, @04:58PM (#22934614)
    Windows are very difficult to write. If this guy modded someone else's, they should hire him.

  • The who thing is stupid (Score:5, Interesting)

    by mlwmohawk (801821) on Tuesday April 01, @05:04PM (#22934690)
    The person "modding" the driver has a license to use that driver. The person receiving the driver must have a license because they have a creative labs card.

    So, there is no "infringement" here.

    Daniel should phrase what he does better, he isn't getting donations for the "driver," as this is a free download and already licensed by creative. He is getting donations for the "work" of modding. In other words, he is being paid for support not the driver.

    Thus he is not running afoul of any IP laws. He is lawfully applying his expertise to private customers running third party hardware and and software, which they have the right to use.

  • Braziliantech of A7V BIOS fame (Score:5, Interesting)

    by klui (457783) on Tuesday April 01, @05:08PM (#22934746)
    I didn't recognize the name but "Braziliantech" did ring a bell. He did some pretty good mods for Asus's A7V BIOSes.

  • Analogy (Score:5, Insightful)

    by apodyopsis (1048476) on Tuesday April 01, @05:16PM (#22934826)
    Software crippling is standard practice. I am a professional embedded software engineer and I guarantee that the majority of model sperated features are all only a few bits of cleverly coded SW to tell them apart. Hell most of the jobs I have ever had in consumer electronics or industrial applications are implemented this way - ie. one standard set of HW and a configuration file and different stickers to tell the top of the range from the basic model.

    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.

    ...BUT...

    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.

  • Creative retracts forum post. (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 01, @05:22PM (#22934898)
    Creative has replaced the original threatening post on the forum with a very defensive one http://forums.creative.com/creativelabs/board/message?board.id=soundblaster&thread.id=116332 [creative.com] Chunks of the original post are still available on the Wired.com article. Here's a smart guy who archive the original post http://www.woyano.com/view/7839/Archive-of-Creative-Labs-Letter-To-Community-Modder [woyano.com] .

  • Gave up many years ago (Score:5, Informative)

    by Brit_in_the_USA (936704) on Tuesday April 01, @05:35PM (#22935040)
    I went through SB live and incompatibilities with very popular VIA chip sets.

    I bought a Audigy (1) and never got the firewire port working or any drivers to work since XP SP2.

    For years I had been annoyed at the rubbish that installs with the drive CD's and how the GUI is totally at odds with Windows.

    I switched to Diamond (with DDL optical output) and Via sound cards (24bit / 96kHz) for a fraction of the price. I haven't looked back, updates are available for vista and they work just fine.

    Due to my bad experiences with Creative and driver support I actively steer clear of *any* product they make for over 5 years and advise family and friends to do the same.

    • Re:Idiots. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by TheGratefulNet (143330) on Tuesday April 01, @04:45PM (#22934442)
      He should make out a cashier's check for the total amount of donations he's received, mail it to Creative Labs

      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?

    • Re:Idiots. (Score:5, Funny)

      by Freeside1 (1140901) on Tuesday April 01, @04:48PM (#22934480)
      mailing it to a charity (for the deaf?) would be a better solution IMHO

    • Except that it's their strategy (Score:5, Informative)

      by an.echte.trilingue (1063180) on Tuesday April 01, @04:53PM (#22934552)
      Except for that the drivers appear to be broken on purpose. The installer checks to see if it is on Vista, and if so it turns off certain features or replaced working drivers with buggy ones. All he did was disable the checks and replace the Vista drivers with the XP ones. According to TFA, the company has said "that whether or not it cripples its Vista drivers is a 'business decision that only we have the right to make.'"

      Looks to me like they are trying to cash in on the Wintel upgrade cycle for no good technical reason: "Oh, if you want to enable all of Vista's advanced features, you need to buy this card over here."

      Bastards, but probably bastards who will make lots of money.

      • Re:Idiots. (Score:5, Insightful)

        by plague3106 (71849) on Tuesday April 01, @04:53PM (#22934548)
        Well, since it's pretty obvious that what he was doing was un-crippling software that they had intentionally broken, I think it's understandable that they're pissed.

        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.
Check for more | Reply

All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners. Comments are owned by the Poster. The Rest © 1997-2008 SourceForge, Inc.