Date: Tue, 20 Oct 1998 21:56:26 +0000
From: "Karsten M. Self" <kmself@ix.netcom.com>
To: lwn@lwn.net
Subject: Translation of french MS Open Letter

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This is pretty severly Babelfished.  I've fixed a couple of eggregious
manglings, but not much. 

-- 
Karsten M. Self (kmself@ix.netcom.com)

    What part of "Gestalt" don't you understand?
    Welchen Teil von "Gestalt" verstehen Sie nicht?

web:       http://www.netcom.com/~kmself
SAS/Linux: http://www.netcom.com/~kmself/SAS/SAS4Linux.html    

  2:51pm  up 34 days, 14:40,  5 users,  load average: 1.07, 1.17, 1.25
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Un petit Français FUD 

October 19, 1998



Madam, Sir,

You know it, I have just been pleased to take the General Management of
Microsoft France following promotion in the United States of Jean-Philippe
Courtois.

In a few weeks I discovered company powerful and innovating, but such
a responsible and deeply anxious to listen to and satisfy his customers
and his partners.

Like every undertaking, Microsoft has competitors and detractors,
nevertheless I was strongly surprised by the nature and the violence of
certain recent attacks, which describe a company which in common does
not have anything with that which I côtoie every day.

It thus appeared significant to to me that Microsoft publishes a Letter
Open explaining the reality of its position compared to the most unjust
criticisms whose we are the object. The purpose of this Opened Letter,
of which you will find a specimen herewith, does not claim to present
Microsoft under one day ideal, nor to convince that we are a company
without defect, but is simply to clarify certain points.

Sincerely yours

Marc Thistle General manager 



OPEN LETTER...  to our thousands of customers, our thousands of partners,
shown to be quite ingenuous victims.

Microsoft is in France the preferred firm of the frameworks of company
(1).

The success of Microsoft however causes on behalf of certain observers
of the sour comments, and this phenomenon tends to develop at the time
of the lawsuit whose company is the object in the United States.

It is from now on current to see relaying rumours which take part in the
construction of a myth, according to which Microsoft would be a mainly
hegemonic company with goal.

Microsoft has without any doubt its share of responsibility, and we do
not dispute that one can criticize the company, which appears to us to
raise of the right of the contradiction most elementary.  But we dispute
the means used sometimes to do it.

The theses most frequently advanced are not supported by studies, the
references and quotations are not allotted and the judgements, often
peremptory, make only take again nonfounded rumours which circulate on
the Internet.

This would undoubtedly be only little of thing, if criticism had not
recently reached these same with which we owe our success.

In front of so much of contempt, it is the respect which very undertaken
owes to its customers and to partners who pushes us today to react.




Microsoft never invented anything

This vision of the things illustrates a fundamental confusion in the
interpretation of the concepts of invention and technological innovation.

As for very undertaken industrial, the role of Microsoft consists in
transforming an invention produces some innovating.

Discovery or invention represents capital exploitable only if it can to
translate into innovation technological, i.e. if it can be integrated
in a product useful, which satisfies a new need, at an acceptable price
by the market.

In all the fields, thousands of inventions remain forever unexploited,
the creativity of the inventors corresponding unfortunately only seldom
to the criteria of the technological innovation.

One of the forces of Microsoft is that its founder, Bill Gates,
impassioned data-processing technology, knew to recognize inventions
which had a technological potential of innovation. It then took the risk
to invest humanly and financially to make evolve/move what was at the
beginning only brilliant ideas, worms of the products strongly innovating.

Thus, for example, Microsoft never disputed that the language BASIC
was invented by Kemmeny and Kurtz. For as much, this language could
not have been largely exploited if Bill Gates had not developed out
of assembler an interpreter compact ultra BASIC (less than 4 KB), and
had then carried it on several machines and processors. This work of
development and adaptation for several platforms made it possible at
Microsoft to lay off in the form of royalties this interpreter BASIC
with many manufacturers of the time like Commodore or Atari. APPLE,
created two years after Microsoft, profited upon the departure of the
interpreted BASIC of Microsoft in its APPLE II.

In the same way, a little later Bill Gates saw as Tim Patterson,
inventor of the stock of code Q-DOS, a data processing specialist of
great talent. Tim Patterson was at the time developer independent and
single employee of Seattle Computer. He was recruited by Microsoft,
as well as other developers thereafter.

>From the basic code the end product, several months of work were
necessary, during which Tim Patterson and of many Microsoft developers
made evolve/move the stock of code of Q-DOS, to make it compatible with
the standards of quality of the time.

The step was identical in the world of the applications and on more
recent technologies.

To innovate, a company of software as Microsoft must know to identify
collaborators with strong potential, to recruit them and preserve them,
in their giving the means of developing their intelligence and their
creativity with the service of the company.

Indeed, the raw material of a company of software is exclusively made up
of grey matter: the performance of Microsoft is thus due to its capacity
to recruit good collaborators

Microsoft thus recruits 4000 people per annum, including one great
number of developers.  However, the demand for intellectual capital is
immense in the software industry, in particular in the United States,
where is installed the majority of the large companies of the sector.
To face the shortage of data processing specialists, the American
Congress besides has just voted a law authorizing the immigration of
300.000 foreign data processing specialists.

The good developers are the subject thus of strong requests on behalf
of the companies. It results from the law of the market that those pass
sometimes from a company to the other, with what constitutes their value,
i.e. their capacity to invent concepts or to develop products.

Yes, for example, Windows NT was conceived by Dave Cutler, former employee
of the firm DIGITAL and one of the creators of system VMS. This assertion
is in conformity with reality, but it does not constitute therefore a
noisy revelation.

Microsoft recruited Dave Cutler in 1988. He was at the time at
DIGITAL. The company entrusted to him as from 1989 the piloting of the
Windows NT project. The first version of this software came out 4 years
later in 1993, thanks to the talent of Dave Cutler, but also to the work
of several hundreds of Microsoft developers.

The repurchase of start-ups innovating by other companies forms part
of the dynamics of the data-processing market: the fast evolution of
technology caused a policy of acquisitions on behalf of all the large
companies of the sector, and not only of Microsoft.

A company, in particular in the sector of new information technologies,
must always have a length to answer the fast trends in the market in
advance. The company not having always in-house the products making
it possible to satisfy the request at the good time, the acquisition
of start-ups enables him to have a greater reactivity and to continue
to innovate vis-a-vis with competition.  Sun Microsystems, one of the
principal competitors of Microsoft, creator of the language Java and
the environment systems around Java, thus repurchased a great number of
companies during last years, among which NetDynamics, Diba, Encore, IMP,
Long View Technology, LightHouse Design Reads, Chorus, CRAY and still
recently IPLANET.

IBM, another competitor of Microsoft, have also carried out 
many acquisitions, not only of innovative start-ups, but also of well 
established companies, lay out of share of market consequent, like Lotus (for
3 billion dollars American in 1995) or Tivoli (for 1 billion
dollars American in 1996).

Microsoft launched out only tardily (there is less than 5 years) in the
repurchase of some start-ups, having hitherto privileged the recruitment
of new collaborators. It is indeed the fast trends in the market as from
1995, corresponding to the great years of the development of the Internet,
which caused the repurchase of several companies by Microsoft. These
small companies, often non quoted in Nasdaq, used developers of quality
on incipient technologies. These technologies thus could be integrated
in the Microsoft platforms, and thus could know a great diffusion.

Consequently, during these years 96-97, Microsoft acquired outside a
share of code more significant than in the previous years, the proportion
of the in-house developed code remaining however largely majority (more
than 90 %).

The start-ups which were repurchased were doubly grateful: in the
financial plan, since their founders and developers became very rich
day at the following day; in the commercial plan, since their creations
were largely diffused and used through Microsoft products.  Microsoft is
one of the first 5 world companies, all confused sectors, as regards
investments under development research and.

Microsoft devotes 17% of its revenues, that is to say this year 3
billion dollars American, in investments devoted to the research and
the development.

One can deny only the private companies, and Microsoft in particular,
make a contribution essential with the development of data-processing
science. Besides one finds a comparable situation in other sectors,
like that of pharmacy.

Thus, they are teams of search gathering on the whole 400 people,
gathering personalities among the most considered sector (such as Jim
Gray, the creator of the transactional CICS at IBM or Rick Rashid,
the inventor of the micronucleuies), and reinforced by more than 13.000
developers and testers, who build each day the success of Microsoft.

These teams of search, established in the United States but also in
Europe, in Cambridge, work on generic technologies which have the role
to be then integrated in the form of components in the systems and
Microsoft applications.

Among these principal research orientations, one can quote: the techniques
of artificial intelligence, intended to simplify the interface enters
the man and the machine; architectures networks and servers distributed
to allow the rise to power of the servers containing PC; techniques of
programming and software tests, to allow to develop and to put at the
point more quickly and in a more reliable way software.




The Microsoft products are of poor quality

Microsoft technology aims at satisfying the needs for the greatest number
of users, in which the majority are not specialists, and for which data
processing is a tool whose handling must be simple.

We will thus evoke here only the topics which directly interest the users
of our technology, reserving for other places the polemic of specialists.

Microsoft software can certainly contain bugs, like all the software.

The bugs are in particular related on the complexity and the number of
different configurations on which the products must be carried out. In
addition, the developers are men and not machines, and can thus be
fallible. This general observation does not prevent Microsoft working
in-depth on the methods of design of its software, and from devoting
significant investments to the procedures of tests, in order to reduce
to the maximum the bugs. We do not dispute the fact that we must make
even more efforts in this direction.

The apparent amplification of this phenomenon is very related to the fact
that our products are diffused very massively, and that, as a corollary,
the number of cases of figure of use of our software, in particular in
demanding professional environments, is very high. Microsoft indeed
made the choice difficult to ensure the interworking of its products
with multiple data-processing platforms, to answer at the request of
its customers.

One of the missions of our technical support is, inter alia, to go up
with the head office of Microsoft the problems encountered by the users,
in order to improve the products.

Microsoft provides also free corrective measures during the lifespan
of its products. These corrective measures bring at the same time new
functionalities called " minor ", and they are placed at the disposal
on the Web site of Microsoft (2).

The Microsoft software wants to be standard products: they contain a
great number of functionalities to be able to satisfy very varied uses.

Another frequent criticism consists in saying that our software is
encumbered useless functionalities and that only 5 % of the functions
are really used in a current way.

Popular wisdom would challenge the argument in the name of "which can
more can less", but we will not be satisfied any.

The functions integrated in the Microsoft software are it after a thorough
analysis of the needs of the consumers, thanks to the compilation of
information which arrives at the customer services of all the Microsoft
subsidiary companies, and to the tested methods which are "Usability 
Labs".

In Usability Labs, one asks users neophytes to take in hand the new
software on PC. The testers analyze the behavior of the users - who
are not helped - and film them. The users are then questioned on the
difficulties which they encountered, the use that they would make of
such or such function; and analyzes it their answers gives place to
recommendations in the development of the products.

The force of the standard software lies in the fact that it
must be sufficiently rich to be appropriate for broad and various
populations. Thus, let us take the example of a population of 100 users,
exerting 10 different trades within a company, and using each one only
20 % of the functionalities of the word processing software Word. It is
probable that by cumulating the use of these 100 users, they are 90 %
of the functionalities of Word which are really used.

Microsoft is however conscious that a given user who would not use that
partially the possibilities of Word can wish to have a simpler interface,
in the respect of a common standard: that formed part of the schedule
of conditions of several of our future products.

Lastly, let us not forget that the standard software has another
advantage: its low unit price for the user, taking into account volumes
of diffusion reached.

The Microsoft software is certainly consumers of material resources,
but the accelerated evolution of the technology of the PC (processors,
memory, hard disk, inputs/outputs etc...) strongly relativizes this
state of things.

Our software has indeed a significant size, which is however not higher
than that of the majority of the products of competition.

In addition, the increase in the software size is directly related to
the improvement of their performances and services rendered to the users.

The passage to the graphic interface was thus a factor of consumption
of significant material resources. At the beginning of the Nineties, at
the time of the passage of MS-CDos with Windows, all the users remember
to have made this observation. It was necessary several years so that
the graphic interface re-enters in the m?urs, but nobody would like to
return today to a word processing to cryptic command in character mode.

Most of the place occupied by the software is also related to the systems
of on line help and self-tuition (which make it possible to assist
the users and to reduce the costs of support). However, the user is not
obliged to preserve these files on the hard disk. Lastly, the increase in
the storage capacity of the hard disks was much faster than the increase
in the weight of the software:  thus, the word processing
software de traitement de texte Word occupy 10% of disk hard of a PC
it there have 10 year (2 MB on a disk hard of 20 MB), whereas it occupy
more only 1,2% of disk hard of a PC of today (approximately 50 MB on a
disk hard of 4 GB).



Microsoft plans to launch very significant programs of communication to
take control of the markets of education and training, and would use the
children as prescribers of its technologies

Present for 10 years in the sector of Education, Microsoft there has
always paid a detailed attention and falls under the dynamics of the
development of new information technologies at the school. To this
end we developed two programs: Granulates the Multi-media one and
Competences 2000.

Granulates the Multi-media one: thanks to this program, assembled in
partnership with Hewlett-Packard, a certain number of primary schools
(18) were seen equipped with multi-media PC and software, including
software not Microsoft; their teachers followed a cycle of formation
to the control of Internet and local area network which was placed at
their disposal. They also took part in a collective?uvre of study of the
teaching use of microprocessing and the multi-media one in the schools,
whose results were made public.

Competences 2000 is a training program to data-processing technologies
intended for the world of education, higher education, to the
professionals of data processing and the applicants for work. It is the
fruit of a partnership innovating between the industry of information
technologies (of which Microsoft), professionals of the formation and
teaching, the public sector and local communities. It aims at creating a
true dynamics aiming at reducing, in France, the shortage of technical
skills, shortage for a long time highlighted by the analysts and the
professionals of data processing.

After a few months, Competences 2000 meets a sharp success on the ground,
which shows that this program answers waiting.

Microsoft brings through Graine of Multi-media and Competences 2000 a
contribution, undoubtedly modest, with the awakening of the importance
of the data-processing tool in the sectors of education and training. We
are not the only ones with launching this type of initiatives, and it
is a good thing, because it is about a major stake requiring the contest
of all the actors of the market.




The goal of Microsoft would not be to make good software, but to
make profit, thanks to contestable commercial methods, involving the
constitution of a monopoly.

The first objective of a company is to serve its customers, by
manufacturing products and services of quality. The associated objective
is to serve its shareholders, the concept of profit, and we will not
deny it, being at the base of the operation of the market economy.

With regard to Microsoft, the quality of our software in all cases was
recognized, at the point to satisfy today the needs for tens of million
users in the world.

This known as, it is true that Microsoft is a powerful company
financially, and this for several reasons.

The strategy of Microsoft consists in developing good software, and
ensuring marketing of it on a very large scale, thanks to partners and
intermediaries which make it possible to ensure this volume.

The profits of Microsoft (30 % of clear margin today) are related to
several factors:


 * the volume of the sales: for Microsoft, as for all the software
   publishers, the margin is directly related to the volume of the
   sales, itself related on the quality of the product and the system
   effectiveness of distribution.

 * size of the market: this one is in constant increase. The
   market of the PC grows approximately 15 % per annum in the world,
   and 90 million PC will be sold in 1999. The sales of Microsoft being
   related to the size of the market of the PC, Microsoft benefits from
   this evolution.

 * the manufacturing cost of the products: the evolution of the
   sales to the companies tends towards a progressive dematerialization
   of the products, with the signing of licence agreements.

 * the manufacturing cost of the products: the evolution of the sales
   to the companies tends towards a progressive dematerialization of
   the products, with the signing of licence agreements. It follows
   a reduction proportional in the sale of the products out of boxes,
   whose logistics and manufacturing cost is not negligible. business
   management: Microsoft is a managed company in a very rigorous way
   and with a permanent preoccupation with an effectiveness, and this
   with all the more of motivation that a great majority of his/her
   collaborators are shareholders.



The marketing strategy of Microsoft implies a relation between partnership
and the developers and the manufacturers, in order to offer powerful
products to the end-users.

The success of an operating system rests on the constitution of an
infrastructure of competences and complementary products, in hardware and
software. When an operating software is developed, integrating the new
functionalities corresponding to the great technological developments of
the moment, it is necessary that as much as possible applications can
use this new system. Versions beta of the software are diffused with
the developers, to enable them to develop new applications, before the
output of the operating system.

The retailers and other tests diffusing the system are those which will
establish the link between new technology and the end-users. It is thus
significant that they have a perfect command of the functionalities
of the new operating system, to be able to advise employment to the
end-users of it.

Microsoft thus devotes a significant budget to this technical and
commercial training of its retailers and partners These commercial
methods, resting on an indirect distribution 100% of the product
traditional, and are practised in the same way by the other industrialists
proposing of the operating systems.

However, the original situation of Microsoft on the market of the
operating systems also explains its success. Indeed, whereas Microsoft
limits itself to the edition of software, its competitors on the market
of the operating systems (Sun with Solaris, and IBM with OS/2) are at
the same time manufacturers of hardware. They thus have logically more
difficulties in market products near other manufacturers of which they
are the candidates.

The sale of a PC with Windows concerns a necessary integration upstream,
and not of the dependent sale.

It is illegal to subordinate the sale of a product to the concomitant
purchase of another product. But in the case present, it is an integration
upstream of a finished product, and not of dependent sale.

The operating system forms integral part of the final configuration which
is proposed to a customer at the end of the chain, as well as the hard
disk or the memory. The obligation of the manufacturer is to provide
to his customers a product in operating condition, being able to give
satisfaction as of the first use.

Let us recall here that the mission of Microsoft is to put microprocessing
at the range of all. For the end-user, the integration of a maximum of
functionalities on the PC is a factor of simplification of startup and
use, which this user seeks, in the final analysis.

There are several channels of sale of PC, and the users have the
choice between international manufacturers, national manufacturers, and
assemblers. The latter, which represent approximately 30 % of the French
market, sell PC by offering the choice of the operating system.  They also
sell machines without operating system, on which can be installed software
like Linux.  This channel will thus interest a population more tested in
data processing. On the other hand, the large majority of the customers,
including in company, ask to profit from PC under Windows, according to
manufacturers' themselves.

This choice of the users is closely related to the great availability
of applications and peripherals designed for Windows: it is enough to
visit the microprocessing ray of any store to realize it.  
it be good also to stress that the PC be the platform material on which
the choice of operating system d' exploitation be the more vast. No
other computer proposes this choice.  Macintosh are delivered with the
MacOS system of APPLE, and one can install Linux there. The stations Unix
RISC of the manufacturers are delivered with Unix the specific version
of these manufacturers. AS/400 from IBM are delivered with OS/400. On
a workstation of the type PC, there are the choice between MS-CDos,
Windows 9X, Workstation Windows NT, Linux, Sun Solaris, SCO Unix,
Unixware, Interactive Unix, IBM OS/2 Warp, and even Rhapsody (adapted
version of MacOS for PC).

The position of Microsoft on the market of the office automation
application and operating systems for PC is certainly significant, but
it does not exempt to us to innovate permanently to meet the needs of
our customers.

Indeed, no constraining rule prevents the market from adopting other
technologies that those of Microsoft. If Microsoft were given a secure
income, the company could impose a raising of prices of its products.

However the price of Windows be remain stable during five
last year, whereas the service that it offer have be very largely
wide (integration of Internet, support of Universal Serial Drink,
tool for car-maintenance, three-dimensional chart 3d more fast, good
support of play, etc).  As for the prices of the application softwares,
they dropped considerably since the last years, and more quickly still
than the products of competition (-47 % since 1991 for Microsoft Word,
against -18 % for Corel WordPerfect over the same period).

Lastly, if Microsoft were really in a situation privileged compared to its
competitors, the company could without danger cease innovating. However
the investment of Microsoft under development research and progresses
constantly, in absolute value like expressed as a percentage of the
turnover, to answer permanently the new challenges of the market.

Actually, the cycle of evolution of technology is so fast, that one would
need only 3 to 4 years so that Microsoft disappears from the market if
the company did not innovate more.




Microsoft would be able to control the world chain of information and
the communication, thus endangering democracy

Can only one company, in fact Microsoft, control the world chain of
information and the communication, and endanger the democracy by taking
the control of the Internet?

It is useful, once and for all, to reestablish with reality.

The control of the Internet is a myth which concerns science fiction.

Microsoft is a made up company men and women, impassioned technologies,
which are responsible and respectful citizens laws before being Microsoft
employees. It is thus unreasonable to make believe that Microsoft could
make an attempt on the democracy and the personal freedoms.

In addition, the Internet is the most open and democratic system which
exists. The takeover of the Internet is completely impossible, and even
less by only one company.

Thus, and even in imagine that Microsoft provide all the standard use by
the network - what be obviously not the case, Microsoft support a list
very broad of standard of market define by some organization independent
- that allow not more with company to control the Internet, that that
have allow with France Telecom to control the telephone conversation
téléphoniques.

The Internet constitutes today the most competing market and that which
develops most quickly with the world. As the number of users increases,
more and more services will develop, and be accessible at a less and
less raised cost, thanks to possibilities of geared down connections.

Many economic operators are implied in the operation of the mother of all
networks: software publishers, service companies, computer manufacturers,
operators of telecommunication, routers, providers of access, etc.

Microsoft positions firstly and mainly on the trade of the manufacture
of the software, the objective of the company being to adapt to all
the standards, protocols and operating platforms used by the Internet
to be able to meet the needs of its customers. The developers can thus
conceive various applications, which make it possible to the users as
well as possible to profit from the potentialities of the Internet.



The only alternative to Microsoft is Linux

Linux is a movement created in 1991 by a Finnish student, Linus
Torvald. On the basis of adapted a Unix core, developers communicating
by Internet ensure the creation of the complementary functions and the
various versions of Linux. Linus Torvald synchronizes and validates
the unit. The fundamental rule is that each developer gives its source
code, so that this one can be improved, and is the subject of later
developments. The product is diffused under specific licence of use,
accompanied by its source code. Each one can thus modify, improve or copy
the software, and redistribute it in its turn, free or not. Commercial
versions are also diffused.

The units installed is estimated at 6 million licences in the world.

Linux has without any doubt its place at the side of the operating system
of Microsoft, but also of those of IBM, Sun, Oracle, and Novell.

The use of software free concern however of a choice
philosophical more than economic, and make some control of operating
system d' exploitation a business of specialist senior.

It appears that Linux does not fulfill today the requirements of the
majority of the companies, and even less of general public.

Linux present of the limits which are a barrier to its diffusion on a
large scale, in particular in the companies and near general public.

In the plan of the stability of the system, Linux poses problems of total
coordination and one strongly feels the absence of a head of project.

Linus Torvald left the university last year to join a Californian
company. The development of Linux since slowed down considerably. In the
same way, the maintenance of each functionality of Linux depends on the
mobilization of the teams. Thus, certain functionalities have not known
updating for two years.

The installation of Linux is delicate. So that the performance of the
system is optimal, each version must be regulated on each computer
with each installation, by a qualified data processing specialist. Its
setting in?uvre and its administration are thus not with the range of
a data processing specialist accustomed to the user-friendly systems,
and even less than one basic user.  The use of Linux is complex, the
software functioning in general with commands in text mode.

Lastly, the application softwares functioning under Linux generally have
limited functionalities.  The word processings seldom have functions now
current on PC or Macintosh: on-the-fly spelling correction, graphic data
entry of tables, integration of graphs coming from applications. The
majority of the word processing softwares under Linux are still connected
at " Microsoft Write " which goes back to 1985.

The advantages related on the exemption from payment and the transparency
of Linux are nonrelevant criteria for the majority of the users.

The exemption from payment of Linux is a not very decisive
advantage. Indeed, the cost of an operating system is marginal compared
to the different costs of the company. The price of the system is
only one of the elements of the price of the data-processing chain
in the companies. The installation of a traditional operating system
costs several times the price of the system itself, very as much as
the realization of a applicatif program and its maintenance. Thus,
by installing Linux, one saves the cost of the operating system, but
one increases that of the installation, and one takes risks for the
maintenance of the applications and the system itself.  So some consider
that the availability of source code sources of Linux be a guarantee
absolute of independence live have screw of software publisher de
logiciels, we perceive badly which be the interest for a company or a
private individual to have access with source of its operating system...

On the other hand, the diffusion of the sources of the systems is very
useful for the students and the researchers, to include/understand the
operation of the system and possibly to modify it. Linux will thus remain
probably a long time still a good subject of study for data processing
specialists, rather than a system dedicated to a significant diffusion.



Conclusion 

We hope that this document will have contributed to give to the reader a
better comprehension of the position of Microsoft in the debates whose
we are the object: once again, we are conscious that the confidence of
our customers and partners is deserved, and criticisms whose we can be
the object must cause all our attention as from the moment when they
are objective.

The teams of Microsoft France are in any case at your disposal to clarify
and specify, if necessary, certain subjects tackled in this document,
but more especially to daily meet your needs.

For all additional information: 
Corinne Got - BDDP Corporate for Microsoft France 
tel. 01 49 09 26 50 or 26 54 
Fx: 01 49 09 27 09 
e-mail: cgot-camard@bddp-corporate.fr


Notes:

1 As testifies some its first place with the classification to the public
  image of the companies published by the Expansion in August 1998.

2 Information on these corrective measures is provided in several forms:
  in the topicality produced sent by monthly e-mail free subscribing
  to the Microsoft customers to this information, in the Microsoft
  publications, and also in the many technical seminars organized by
  Microsoft for the customers, partners and developers. Information in
  addition is largely relayed by the data-processing press.

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