I invite everyone to take a look at this thread… and be utterly disgusted. I also invite anyone who has time to spare, to do whatever you can in decreasing the market share of Creative Labs products.
I know that the influence of the internet is a very small percentage in affecting the bottom-line of hardware manufacturers such as this. The beauty of the web is that it doesn’t take much effort to be heard – no matter how small you are. So unlike trying to fix governments, the phrase “do your part, no matter how small” certainly applies here.
Read on if you want my detailed opinion on the matter…
The short of the story is that Creative Labs, a popular manufacturer of audio cards has threatened legal action against an independent community modder for creating alternate drivers to make their products work better than the “official” ones.
In the course of the initial post, they go ahead and give reasons such as Intellectual Property, License Agreements, etc. which are all valid. However they’ve gone totally bonkers morally with regards to how they have handled this whole thing. There is such a thing as good will, even in the corporate sense.
The furthest they could’ve done was to simply disallow the user from asking for donations, and only because of the technicality of construing donations as “business profits” – even if in reality, donations are optional.
OR
If they were really concerned about the legality of everything, then sure, forbid him to distribute his drivers. In return however, Creative should not only assume, but guarantee the responsibility for providing the customers with the driver support similar to what Daniel_K was providing their customers.
The thing about the forum post that makes me sick to my stomach is this fact: Creative is actively preventing a loyal customer from providing their other customers a level of support that the company itself is incapable (or unwilling) of giving – simple as that. If they only did their jobs and provided the expected level support to the customers, there wouldn’t be a need for a guys such like Daniel_K to go independent in the first place.
What they should’ve done is/are:
- Hire the guy and put him to work The in-house creative developers are obviously too busy to give the customers the level of support they paid to have.
- Put out drivers that actually work
One of the major reasons
Daniel_k‘s alternate drivers got so popular was because it was able to make their older sound-cards work properly on Windows Vista. If the cards work on XP, there’s no reason why Creative shouldn’t take the time to make working drivers for Vista (especially after committing to releasing products for Vista). If they truly don’t feel the need to continue support for the older cards, that’s fine – but don’t go after people who take the time to do the job which they aren’t willing to do – that’s not cool at all.
Honestly, I’m glad I stopped using Creative products after the first Audigy series… and given how good the “stock” audio hardware in motherboards are now (e.g. RealTek, etc.) I really don’t feel the need to have any of Creative’s extra features. I currently have a M-Audio sound card for audio recording (which wasn’t designed for gaming), and I just switch to the stock built-in audio card of the motherboard when I play my games… and guess what, I don’t feel compelled to get a “better” audio experience when playing games.
I suggest you guys do the same… that or at least support other audio card manufacturers.