Creative Labs Driver Quality

WHEREAS Creative has sold and continues to sell computer peripherals marked as having capabilities which are in fact not usable in Windows Vista using Creative's own drivers, and WHEREAS the reason for the failure to function is that said capabilities are purposely crippled and/or disabled in software for purposes of planned obsolescence, marketing, etc.;

WHEREAS Creative has decided to halt the work of independent developers in offering support for its products which Creative itself is unwilling or unable to offer;

WHEREAS Creative has an informal reputation for providing substandard driver software for its products, said software often containing serious bugs, incompatibilities, and "bloatware" or useless functionality and additional software which may take up storage space and waste processor cycles at little or no benefit to the user;

WHEREAS Creative has a track record of support for free (as in libre) and open source software development which is lackluster at best;

WE, THE UNDERSIGNED, HEREBY DEMAND:

1. Creative will cease selling mislabeled products which do not notify the user in a large, easily noticeable typeface of features which are unavailable in popular consumer operating systems. That is to say, either the drivers must be made to support all capabilities listed on the product packaging in all major consumer operating systems, or the products must be expressly labeled as not supporting all capabilities in all major consumer operating systems.

2. Creative will allow independent developers to offer repackaged drivers for its products which offer improved functionality to end users, within reason.

3. Creative will increase its commitment to providing quality, thoroughly tested and bug free drivers without bloatware or with bloatware that is opt-in as opposed to mandatory install. Creative will further pledge to track and fix bugs in its drivers in a timely fashion and commit to providing regular driver updates for all its products during a reasonable product life cycle.

4. Creative will commit to supporting the independent development of free and open-source drivers for its products for major open source operating systems such as GNU/Linux, *BSD and OpenSolaris by opening design and API documentation to developers within reason, and by opening a channel of communication which can be used by open source developers to communicate with developers at Creative Labs.

By complying with these demands, we believe that Creative may secure a stable future as a manufacturer of computer peripherals that is once again lauded for its attention to quality.