[ Thanks to Michael Larabel for
this link. ]
“First, however, it’s important to note how the
situation evolved into Creative open-sourcing their binary Sound
Blaster X-Fi driver… Back in June of 2006 we shared that Creative
was working on an X-Fi Linux driver. Creative hoped to have this
driver ready by Q2’07 (even though the first X-Fi sound card
shipped in August of 2005). This promised driver would offer full
support for ALSA, OpenAL v1.1, and even EAX support.“In the second quarter of 2007, Creative Labs admitted they
duped Linux for Windows Vista. Bringing their Creative Sound
Blaster series support to Windows Vista required more resources
than anticipated, so they in turn devoted less resources to
supporting Linux. Their revised ETA put a Creative X-Fi Linux
driver out in the third or fourth quarter of 2007, but it would be
just a beta driver.”