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<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><b>Please see below Microsoft’s official company statement in response to the Open Source Vs Proprietary Software.<o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify">The open source versus proprietary software debate is no longer relevant. Most customers today operate diverse environments and simply want their technology to work together well, hence the need to focus on interoperability.
At Microsoft, w<span style="color:black">e help customers optimize their existing IT infrastructure while also transitioning to new technologies.
</span>We help solve their interoperability challenges and find efficient and cost effective solutions for their mixed IT environments.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify">Microsoft’s commitment to ‘openness’ also supports developers and partners. We have built close partnerships with the PHP, Apache, and Linux open source communities. (According to the
<a href="http://www.linuxfoundation.org/news-media/announcements/2012/04/linux-foundation-releases-annual-linux-development-report">
<span style="color:windowtext;text-decoration:none">Linux Foundation</span></a>, Microsoft is ranked as a top contributor to Linux.)
<o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">Customers are at the heart of our approach. We enable customers to deploy and manage solutions in environments that integrate Microsoft and open source technologies. Multiple engineering teams at Microsoft actively participate in open source
projects and share the common industry view that software users will continue to see a mixed IT and development environment for years to come<o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:16.2pt;background:white"><b><span style="font-size:8.0pt;font-family:"Segoe UI","sans-serif";color:#1F497D">Kind Regards,<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:16.2pt;background:white"><b><span style="font-size:8.0pt;font-family:"Segoe UI","sans-serif";color:#1F497D">Lavinniah Muthoni | Public Relations & Events Manager | Microsoft East and Southern Africa | Phone</span></b><span style="font-size:8.0pt;font-family:"Segoe UI","sans-serif";color:#1F497D">
+254 20 286 8245 <b>| Mobile</b> +254 735414028 <b>| Fax</b> +254 20 272 2999 <b>
|</b> <b>Office</b> 7th Floor, I & M Bank Building, 2nd Ngong Avenue, Capital Hill, P.O. Box 64736, 00620 Nairobi, Kenya
<b>| <o:p></o:p></b></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-fareast-language:FR"> </span><span lang="PT" style="mso-fareast-language:FR"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
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