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Creative GPLs X-Fi Sound Card Driver Code

Posted by timothy on from the intelligent-move dept.

An anonymous reader writes "In a move that's a win for the free software community, Creative Labs has decided to release their binary Linux driver for the Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi and X-Fi Titanium sound cards under the GPL license. This is coming after several failed attempts at delivering a working binary driver and years after these sound cards first hit the market."

5 of 369 comments (clear)

  1. At last! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    This is great news! With proper sound card driver support maybe 2009 will finally be the year of the Linux desktop!

    1. Re:At last! by meringuoid · · Score: 4, Funny
      The experience has all the appeal of root canal without sedation.

      There's your problem you see. It should be user canal, and you sudo to get elevated privileges as and when needed.

      --
      Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
    2. Re:At last! by wikinerd · · Score: 4, Funny

      If you have to edit a text file, your software is not ready for (l)users.

      Who wants lusers using the same OS as you? One of the reasons I use GNU/Linux (Debian) is precisely because the user communities are free of lusers, so that I know that whenever I post a message to a mailing list I will get answers from fellow power users.

      Lusers tend to infect a software project with their stupidity and naivety. They tend to click on any link they see in their emails, so virus writters target whatever OS the lusers use most. The developers of a piece of software also tend to make their software more suitable for stupid users because they tend to think that accomodating more users is a good thing, thus driving power users away. Unfortunately this currently happens with some GNU/Linux distros. You just have to see that many newer GNU/Linux software projects only work with X and have no command line support, and many websites don't work with text browsers anymore.

      Whatever software we use is not only determined by technical merit but also by social factors. We want to use software which is different from anyone else, particularly the lusers and the closed source world. If our OS requires interaction with a command line and editing obscure text files, then we can know for sure that we will never have to deal with a luser in our support mailing lists, etc.

      Thus, user-unfriendliness is a filter that we can use intentionally to keep non-powerusers away from our communities. If GNU/Linux ever becomes the preferred OS of lusers I am going to switch to OpenBSD, and if that too gets infected by lusers I will write my own.

  2. Sweet! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Now I can play all those great games that got built on top of the open-source ID engines!

  3. Obligatory bash reference by AcidPenguin9873 · · Score: 4, Funny

    http://bash.org/?24262