Something in the papers caught my eye today. Creative Labs, a subsidiary of the home grown sound blaster maker firm Creative Singapore released a public warning against a sound blaster enthusiast, only known as Daniel-K for profiteering from illegal computer drivers distribution. The turnout is ironically amusing, I must say.
Apparently, Creative has been selling hardware running on substandard drivers which claimed to run compatibly with Windows Vista. Advanced features which could run on Windows XP were locked when the drivers detected that Vista was present. Daniel-K wrote patches which inject life, restoring full functionality to the cards.
The entire debacle raised to a new level when Creative Labs attempted to crucify Daniel-K publicly, accusing him of gaining monetary benefits from something “he did not own”. Forum moderators also removed Daniel’s forum posts, effectively silencing him.
As the news spread like wild fire, the power of the Internet or the justice of the Internet Community seemed to back Daniel up as countless netizens threatened to boycott Creative products totally. Daniel-K spoke up too.
It’s sad to hear a Singaporean company weathering criticisms eh? Furthermore, Creative Labs came across as some kid who lost his toy to some next door kiddo who could play it better. Here you have a sound card not performing at its peak, a gifted child comes along and restores it to its full glory. Why the harsh rejoinder from Creative?
The debate on rights and terms of use has always been a controversial one. Here you spend your monthly hard earned on a really expensive hardware which promises Dhoby Digital among other things, you go home happily with your purchase but discover instead that you just spent half a month’s wages on a really pricey paper weight. You then download some back alley patches and the manufacturer accuses you of infringing intellectual property, challenging you not to use the product if you don’t agree to what is first agreed upon.
Remember the iPhone incident when owners of newly released iPhones could not get them to work on other mobile carriers other than AT&T? Users attempted to jailbreak the iPhone firmware but were threatened with yet another overwrite with the next firmware update, rendering the iPhone useless.
Same thing that happens here.
And as if it isn’t enough to make you paint the entire town red with false hopes on getting the hardware work, the company then drops a hint that they do brick your hardware intentionally.
O’Shaughnessy (Director, Corporate Comms, Creative Labs) also wrote that whether or not it cripples its Vista drivers is a “business decision that only we have the right to make.”
Seriously, you bought the freakin’ sound blaster, for crying out loud. It’s supposed to be blastin’. Who’s the one here manipulating the entire situation by making an asinine business decision of sealing up functionalities on Vista. Not very creative of Creative right?
The worst mistake Creative had made was to make it a public matter. Creative could have protected its intellectual property by getting Daniel-K to join them as one of the developers, or buy over his hard work. He’s a talent, isn’t he? And isn’t Singapore scouting for foreign talent? He’s the exact candidate here. By doing so, it would have contained the spread of some verboten, closet technologies.
But no, that’s not what Creative had done. The modified drivers are now downloading like hotcakes on the BitTorrent networks.
I think Creative is just sore that Daniel have gotten some donations amounting to some $146. In the Open Source community, developers often ask for donations to help them fund for further developmental costs. And in this case, Daniel needed extra perks to buy new hardware to work on. Yes, it’s probably true that Creative’s work were never Open Source to begin with, but here’s someone who’s helping Creative to sell more Vista capable sound enhancers. Wouldn’t it be a win-win situation if Creative shuts an eye, Daniel’s work could probably do more good than harm. Besides, a full fledged public listed company against a friendly computer programmer? Oh please. Now, Creative will have to lose more than $146 if people are to boycott its products.
I totally agree that Daniel shouldn’t have solicited payment in the first place; however, for a case of this scale, Creative really has nothing to lose.