In article <47f11462$1@news.povray.org>, dne### [at] sanrrcom says...
> Warp wrote:
> >   Copyright applies to actual software source code. It does not apply t
o
> > algorithms nor functionality. If you create a program which behaves in 
the
> > same way as another program you are not infringing copyright, as long a
s
> > your code is original.
> 
> I think it's a little different in the USA.  You're infringing on the 
> copyright if you copied the code. It doesn't even matter if it does 
> something completely different. If you learn that Creative's driver for
 
> some reason will run your printer too, it's still copyright infringement
 
> to give it out for the purposes of running the printer.
> 
> >   Claiming that making a program which interfaces with a piece of hardw
are
> > is IP theft is absolutely ludicrous. 
> 
> If it's 98% Creative's code, with 2% changes, then it's a derivative 
> work. I don't know the whole story, but this doesn't sound like he 
> created a driver from scratch.  (Indeed, the way I read it almost made 
> it sound like he was making Creative's drivers work on non-Creative 
> cards.)  But from comments, it sounds like he took Creative's drivers 
> for cards that *do* work on Vista, and back-ported the changes to cards
 
> that don't work on Vista.
> 
Its the last one basically. They opted to disable eax, Dolby 5.1, and 
many other "features" of cards that ran properly on XP, when installed 
on Vista, then put out minor incremental changes to the Vista ones that 
kind of sort of fixed minor things. Basically, you go out and buy an X-
Fi card and it lists a whole mess of shit its supposed to do ***and*** 
claims Vista support, then you install it and what you have isn't any 
better than if you had installed an old SB-AWE32... The drivers 
themselves contain "all" of the code needed to allow Vista to work, but, 
they are set to test for Vista, or otherwise disable function when 
running under it. Now we have it, more or less, from the horses mouth. 
They *intentionally* disabled those features, so that people would be 
forced to *upgrade* to some half assed, but more expensive, card, 
designed to run specifically under Vista, which added basically "no" new 
features, and "no" major improvements in the hardware. The only apparent 
difference would have been a few minor tweaks, and the fact that the 
drivers would ***only*** work with Vista.

This guy comes along and goes. Gosh! There is all these older cards out, 
and not even the stuff that says it works properly under Vista actually 
does, or supports all its features, I wonder why? So, he put out 
something that would allow the absurdly large number of people that have 
cards, but can't make them work in Vista, as well as programs that don't 
support the screwball software based audio tech that MS decided should 
replace the card's entirely (I can't imagine Creative was real happy 
being told, "Well, its nice that you made all these cards, with all 
those algorithms, and other stuff, but all we need now is something to 
pipe our data through. All that other stuff is now junk." Suddenly 
someone had a solution to a problem Creative didn't seem "able" to fix 
for some reason. Turns out, the real problem may simply be that they are 
"unwilling" to fix it, since they are pushing for adoption of what ever 
minor upgrades they have been pushing for Vista.

Its telling that, having beat the wasp nest with a tennis racket, they 
have backpedaled on the guy being allowed to provide the support they 
refuse to, and statements have been made on this thread:

http://forums.creative.com/creativelabs/board/message?
board.id=Vista&thread.id=30737&view=by_date_ascending&page=15

which suggest they are also rethinking, or at least discussing if they 
screwed up, and how badly, with their higher ups, if donations really 
"are" some sort of violation or not. Though, at this point it hardly 
matters. Their stock has taken a nose dive in the last 24 hours, people 
are literally dumping their cards in toilets, then taking pictures to 
post on the forum, in protest of Creative's statement that they 
basically didn't and don't plan to provide support, and how they handled 
the whole thing.

IP, legality, etc., is all meaningless if you piss off your user base so 
badly that your so called IP becomes as worthless as confederate money. 
And their own EULA suggests that the only violation here is theirs, 
since they provide the drivers, for free, but someone else has to 
*adapt* them, to provide the "intended use" they supposedly provided in 
the first place.

-- 
void main () {

    if version = "Vista" {
      call slow_by_half();
      call DRM_everything();
    }
    call functional_code();
  }
  else
    call crash_windows();
}

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