Creative Quebra Drivers Intencionamente para não funcionarem
Posted: 05 Apr 2008 02:43
pcalcado wrote:A notícia não é tão nova mas não vi nada por aqui:
http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/2008/03/s ... om-so.html
http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/2008/04/d ... ho-fi.html
The forum thread titles say it all: a full-scale customer revolt among buyers of Creative Labs' sound cards, complete with boycott demands, online petitions and wild threats of class-action lawsuits.
It's the denouement of a short, fiery saga. The alleged villain of the piece is Creative, which advertises its add-in PC sound cards as Vista compatible, despite offering only limited functionality under that platform in its Vista drivers. Our hero is fan developer Daniel_K, who fixed Creative's gimped software and made the modified package available to other users.
In doing so, he attracted the attention of Creative's vice president of corporate communications, Phil O'Shaughnessy, who posted a warning to its official forums on Friday. In the letter, addressed to Daniel_K directly, he accused him of stealing and told him to cease distribution of the upgraded software.
"The difference in this case is that we own the rights to the materials that you are distributing," O'Shaughnessy wrote. "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."
All hell broke loose, but not before the very first response calmly summed up the collective thoughts of dozens of fans.
"My God, you guys got some balls on you," wrote a poster nicknamed TrooperTom. "Either that, or you're all borderline mad"."My name is Daniel Kawakami and I'm Brazilian," he writes. "I'm NOT a cracker, a hacker, just an enthusiast modder with basic assembly knowledge and very persistent."
Kawakami's expertise allowed him to enable advanced features in sound cards that Creative advertised as Vista-compatible, but which did not perform as well under that operating system as they do under Windows XP. After tolerating the distribution of his unofficial drivers for a time, Creative's vice president of corporate communications, Phil O'Shaughnessy, ultimately asked him to stop, and accused him of "stealing their goods." O'Shaughnessy also wrote that whether or not it cripples its Vista drivers is a "business decision that only we have the right to make."
