Are you sure it was truly just to mess with you? If I were a Linux kernel maintainer back then, and there was some hardware I wanted to fix support for but didn

Are you sure it was truly just to mess with you? If I were a Linux kernel maintainer back then, and there was some hardware I wanted to fix support for but didn't personally have the money to buy, I think "trick Microsoft into divulging how their own driver for it works" would be what I'd see as a "clever hack"!