Creative Labs heard your chest-beating across the internet and decided to reinstate spurned developer Daniel_K less than a week after booting him from their forums. Unlike Creative, Daniel_K issued drivers that allowed Creative sound cards to work properly under Vista, and even enabled previously crippled features. The drivers were downloaded over 100,000 times. The company thanked the developer by accusing him of “enabling our technology and IP to run on sound cards for which it was not originally offered or intended, [in] effect, stealing our goods.” Even though he has been reinstated, Daniel_K is still pissed.

“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.”

He acknowledges that Creative has a case regarding intellectual property, but is furious about the company’s strategy. “I’d say they are stealing [from] their own customers by disabling features based on technologies they own (so they did it on purpose) and by charging for a software that requires an improved driver that they refuse to provide.”

“At least they are getting flamed all over the web and they are certainly mad about it. That is enough reward for my hard work,” he wrote.

Though Creative claims that their eviction notice “did not make it as clear as we would have liked that we do support driver development by independent third parties,” the company is hardly contrite. A statement released to the press defiantly declared that they do not support or appreciate “the unauthorized distribution of other companies’ property.” Way to learn from the experience, Creative.

Creative climbs down over home brew Vista drivers [The Register]
(Photo: Young Frankenstein)
PREVIOUSLY: Creative Sparks Customer Revolt When It Tries To Silence Third-Party Programmer

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