El siguiente articulo que nos envia un colega de MISTICA ha sido escrito
hace mas de un a�o pero trae luces al debate sobre los convenios que
Microsoft contrata con gobiernos y organismos internacionales...
========
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/15/technology/15SOFT.html?ex=1053964145&ei=1&en=576f9a8c32381a95
>Microsoft Sticks With Tough Tactics
>May 15, 2003
>By THOMAS FULLER
>International Herald Tribune
>
>BRUSSELS, May 14 - At least 90 percent of the world'spersonal computers
>run on Windows software. But Microsoft wanted still more. Last summer,
>Orlando Ayala, then in charge of worldwide sales at Microsoft, sent an
>e-mail message titled Microsoft Confidential to senior managers laying out
>a company strategy to dissuade governments across the globe from choosing
>cheaper alternatives to the ubiquitous Windows computer software systems.
>Mr. Ayala's message told executives that if a deal involving governments
>or large institutions looked doomed, they were authorized to draw from a
>special fund to offer the software at a steep discount or even free if
>necessary. Steven A. Ballmer, Microsoft's chief executive, was sent a copy
>of the e-mail message.
>The memo on protecting sales of Windows and other desktop software
>mentioned Linux, a still small but emerging software competitor that is
>not owned by any specific company. "Under NO circumstances lose against
>Linux," Mr. Ayala wrote. This memo, as well as other e-mail messages and
>internal Microsoft documents obtained from a recipient of the Microsoft
>e-mail, offers a rare glimpse these days into the inner workings of
>Microsoft, the world's largest software company. They spell out a program
>of tactics that were carried out in recent years, ranging from steep price
>discounts to Microsoft employees lying about their identities at trade
>shows. The Microsoft campaign against Linux raises questions about how
>much its aggressive, take-no-prisoners corporate culture has changed,
>despite having gone through a lengthy, reputation-tarnishing court battle
>in the United States that resulted in Microsoft's being found to have
>repeatedly violated antitrust laws. Perhaps most important, certain
>discounts may run afoul of European market regulators,
>who are still investigating accusations that Microsoft abused their
>antitrust laws. Discounting is a perfectly normal corporate practice. But
>under European law, companies that hold a dominant market position like
>Microsoft are prohibited from offering discounts that are aimed at blocking
>competitors from the market. Microsoft has been concerned with the
>legality of its discounts in the past, consulting a London law firm on a
>specific discount plan in 1998, before it was determined in court that
>the company had a monopoly in desktop operating systems. In a telephone
>interview today, Jean-Philippe Courtois, the chairman of Microsoft's
>operations in Europe, Africa and the Middle East, defended the use of the
>special fund described in Mr. Ayala's e-mail message, saying it was part
>of a strategy to be "competitive" and "relevant" in the market for big
>government and education deals.
>"Linux is obviously a key competitor," Mr. Courtois said. Rivals use
>similar tactics, he said. Sun Microsystems, for example, "is giving
>away StarOffice to basically governments and schools," he said. The Sun
>suite of programs runs on both Windows and Linux operating systems. Mr.
>Courtois said that Microsoft sometimes gave software to "very low-income
>countries."
>He cited a program where Microsoft donated software in South Africa and
>helped train teachers to use it. Mr. Ayala's memo said that the discounts
>could be offered to "developed and developing countries," and that an
>"initial focus" was being put on Latin America, Africa, the Middle East,
>India and China. In his e-mail message, he focused on governments and
>large institutions buying mostly desktop software. A separate memo
>described a discounting program for corporate customers worldwide. Two
>days after Mr. Ayala sent his e-mail message, Michael Sinneck, the
>executive in charge of Microsoft's services department, sent a message
>giving details of a program to provide corporate clients with discounts on
>the hourly rates charged by Microsoft's consulting business. The memo said
>nearly $180 million had been allocated in the 2003 fiscal year, which ends
>in June, for this purpose alone. Of that, $140 million was earmarked for
>consulting services for server software, an area where Microsoft has a
>growing share of the market but still faces lively competition,
>particularly from big companies like I.B.M. that are promoting Linux as an
>alternative to Microsoft Windows.
>Servers are the powerful computers used by corporations to store data,
>manage Web sites and perform other network tasks. The software that runs
>servers is the subject of one of the two antitrust cases currently open
>against Microsoft in the European Community. In broad terms, Microsoft is
>accused of illegally leveraging its overwhelming dominance of the PC
>software market into the server market. European antitrust laws are
>generally stricter than comparable American laws, but the Microsoft
>practices described in the memos may raise red flags for regulators in the
>United States as well. In June 2001, a federal appeals court in Washington
>ruled that Microsoft had violated antitrust laws by bullying business
>partners and rivals to thwart any competitive challenge to Windows. Later
>that year, Microsoft reached a settlement with the Bush administration,
>agreeing not to use its monopoly power in PC software, including pricing
>deals and contract terms, to effectively force PC makers to favor
>Microsoft products over competing offerings. Among the documents is an
>e-mail message from an outside lawyer, Bill Allan of the London-based firm
>Linklaters, to Microsoft that offers a precise interpretation of European
>Community law on the matter of discounts, including the view that
>short-term discounting would be more likely to escape scrutiny. The
>message, from 1998, advised Microsoft that its discounts should not
>discriminate between clients and that discounts
>could not be aimed at excluding competitors from the market.
>"Discounts are not per se unlawful," Charles Stark, a former antitrust
>official at the Justice Department and a partner at Wilmer, Cutler &
>Pickering in Brussels, said in an interview. "It depends on the market
>circumstances and how they use them and what their impact is." Mr. Stark,
>who has not seen the documents, pointed out that under European law
>"pricing behavior can be viewed differently by a dominant firm than by a
>nondominant firm." Asked whether the discounting program for server
>software consulting was legal in Europe, given Microsoft's position, Mr.
>Courtois, the Microsoft executive, said that consulting was a "break even"
>business. "We are not a global services company," he said. "We need to
>compete against the big guys." Mr. Courtois cited I.B.M. and Oracle as
>companies with large consulting businesses. The Microsoft documents show
>the preoccupation among top managers with countering the open-source
>movement, a group of programmers who want the software that runs computers
>to be offered free of charge. The codes behind open-source software are
>developed openly by independent teams of programmers, allowing companies
>to customize their programs and paying for services to make the software
>perform better. This is in stark contrast to Microsoft, which keeps most
>of its source code secret - although governments and some corporations are
>increasingly allowed to view the code. Linux, the biggest open-source
>threat to Microsoft, has a tiny share of the market for personal computer
>software. But Linux was installed in 26 percent of the large data-serving
>computers sold last year that power corporate networks and the Internet,
>according to International Data, a market research company. Microsoft's
>Windows was the
>operating system on 44 percent of the servers.
>The server market is one area where Linux appears to have some
>momentum. The use of Linux is also being supported by a handful of
>Microsoft rivals and encouraged by many governments, especially in Europe,
>as a cheaper and perhaps more secure alternative to Windows software. The
>French, for example, have a Web site that recommends Linux systems for
>government departments. Mr. Ballmer, Microsoft's chief executive, once
>referred to Linux's licensing as "a cancer that attaches itself in an
>intellectual property sense to everything it touches." In the face of this
>competition, the Microsoft documents show the significant resources the
>company devotes - and the unconventional tactics it sometimes uses - to
>combat Linux. Chris O'Rourke, a Microsoft employee, described attending
>LinuxWorld, a trade fair in California, where he "purported to be an
>independent computer consultant" working with several public school
>districts, according to an e-mail message he sent on Aug. 20, 2002.
>"In general, people bought this without question," Mr. O'Rourke wrote.
>"Hook, line and sinker." He said his goal was to glean intelligence about
>the competition. His guise, Mr. O'Rourke said, "got folks to open up and
>talk." Mr. O'Rourke did not respond to a fax and voice mail message
>seeking comment. Another employee, Todd Brix, said in an e-mail message
>that he attended a Linux conference in June 2001 in San Jose, Calif.,
>pretending to be an "ambivalent OEM." Original equipment manufacturers, or
>O.E.M.'s, are companies like Hewlett-Packard and Dell Computer that buy
>Windows software licenses.
>Reached at his office on Tuesday, Mr. Brix said that when attending such a
>show, "you don't broadcast that you're a Microsoft person." "You don't
>disguise that fact," he said. "You just don't lead with your chin." In his
>message, Mr. Brix described the technical issues discussed at the show and
>said the tone of the meeting "was an even mix of Local Union hall teamster
>gathering, Christian Scientist revival and Amway sales conference." Of all
>the Microsoft tactics described in the internal messages, the two discount
>programs appear to be the most aggressive - and perhaps the most legally
>questionable. Mr. Ayala sent his memo at 8:17 a.m. on July 16, 2002. In
>ddition to Mr. Ballmer, the recipients included two Microsoft vice
>presidents - James Allchin and Jeffrey S. Raikes -along with some of the
>company's top lawyers and the general managers of Microsoft's operations
>in Asia, Europe, Africa and the Middle East. Mr. Ayala wrote that in
>today's "difficult economic environment" some institutions and companies
>were focusing on cheaper software." "It is important," he continued, "that
>we have a way to address large PC purchases that involve low-cost/no-cost
>competitors in the education (and government) sectors, especially in
>emerging markets." The solution, he wrote, was to "tip the scales" toward
>Microsoft in these deals by using the special fund, which he called the
>Education and Government Incentive Program. The fund was to be used "only
>in deals we would lose otherwise," Mr. Ayala said. When he wrote the memo,
>Mr. Ayala was a quite high-level executive at Microsoft, reporting
>directly to Mr. Ballmer. He was in charge of sales and marketing and
>responsible for roughly 22,000 of the more than 50,000 Microsoft employees.
>In March, Mr. Ayala was transferred to lead a new division that focuses on
>small and medium-size companies. This new push is one of Microsoft's top
>priorities. Mr. Ayala was not available to comment. In his separate e-mail
>message, Mr. Sinneck, the Microsoft services executive, wrote that the
>consulting fund would be used to cover the difference between the
>"discounted customer rate and the standard services billing rate per hour."
>Reached this week, Larry Meadows, marketing manager for Microsoft's
>services group at company headquarters in Redmond, Wash., said the fund
>could be used "anywhere it needs to be." "There's not really a limit to
>say that you can use it only in certain geographies," Mr. Meadows added.
>He said the funds would be used again in the next fiscal year that begins
>in July.
>Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company
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