There’s been some hoo-haa in the webosphere over the last few days over the treatment of Daniel_K who has been supplying Vista drivers for Creative hardware.

From what I can gather Creative have not done right by their customers by supplying good, working drivers for Vista. This enterprising individual has hacked/modded them and then made his work available for download to the delight of many Creative users. All well and good, that is until he started asking for ‘donations’.  That’s when Creative bigwigs came down hard and heavy telling him to STOP.

Now, fair enough, companies like Creative have to protect their investments and make a profit - but - if they’re not doing the job they are supposed to be (after a year of Vista being available) then I do not see how they can be up in their ivory tower telling us mere mortals to put up with what they provide, whether it works properly or not. OK, maybe the guy shouldn’t have asked for ‘donations’, but he is spending his time on these modifications for other people to make use of so possibly he is justified in asking for recompense.

The main contention I have with this situation though is the way Creative are acting, they are apparently disabling some usability in Vista on purpose to the detriment of the people who are purchasing their products. There is no excuse after over a year to say ‘hey we haven’t got round to doing good drivers yet’ and this guy is obvious talented enough to do the job for them - so why aren’t Creative saying ‘ maybe we should either employ him or at least pay him for the time he’s spent doing our job for us’. But no, yet again big companies are thinking only of themselves and their bottom-line rather than the customer. It seems they’d rather inconvenience the customer than do the right thing. Unfortunately, the customer often isn’t in a position to do anything about it either - well except for what many are supposedly now doing, which is boycotting Creative products and causing a bit of a web headache for the company.

For those interested in the story here’s a link to Wired.com for Daniel_K’s side of the story