On Saturday 20 April 2013, the website of the TV program Le Vinvinteur —which airs on the France 5 channel, every Sunday at 20:00— published a series of documents [5] (FR) dealing with the "Open Bar" agreement between Microsoft and the French Ministry of Defence. The documents were broadcast on 21 April 2013, during the show entitled "The armed forces, Microsoft addicts?"
The Vinvinteur website published the following documents:
- final report of the workgroup in charge of evaluating the master agreement with Microsoft's draft [6] (FR)
- service contract for maintenance of computer systems using Microsoft products with option to purchase [7] (FR)
- 2013 master agreement with Microsoft Corporation's draft [8] (FR)
Two of these documents are indeed the original versions of documents that we had requested from the Ministry of Defence and that the latter had
extensively redacted before conveying them to us [9].
With this publication, the Vinvinteur team supplements information that had been published by the French satirical weekly Le Canard Enchaîné (The Chained Duck) on Wednesday 17 April 2013, and that April had reacted upon in a press release [10].
April hopes that publication of those documents will help shed light on this problematic master agreement, a threat to national security.
Our organisation also hopes the present disclosure will pressure the Minister of Defence to answer his February mail [11], and calls on him to adjourn negotiations with Microsoft until this affair is fully transparent, so that work can resume on solid ground. April will also be in touch with Members of the French Parliament and inform them on the latest additions to this dossier.