Based on what little I have just read, it sounds to me like Creative decided not to release Vista drivers for what it perhaps considered to be legacy sound cards - preferring instead that customers purchase the latest & greatest sound card with accompanying Vista drivers.Wow, Creative needs to catch a wake up already, that Daniel dude accomplished in a few months what an entire of team of coders could probably not do.
If that is the case, then, much like some of the software piracy arguments, Creative and its partners would not have lost any profits from those customers that preferred not to invest in new Creative sound cards, which means that Daniel_K would not have been stealing money out of Creative's pocket.
The thing is, that asking for donations, is vastly different from charging upfront for something - people can decide to donate absolutely nothing whatsoever. Another issue, is that Daniel_K is unlikely to receive millions [of X currency] in donations, which brings into question the whole IP profiteering allegations that Creative has made against Daniel_K, at most, Daniel_K is likely to break-even in terms of time & effort spent hacking Creative's heXPee drivers to make them work in Vista.
Creative has made a huge mistake here and I'm sure there will be loads of ex-Creative customers worldwide as a direct result of Creative's heavy-handedness.
