Microsoft signs research center deal with French gov’t

PARIS – Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer met French Minister of Research François d’Aubert in Paris Tuesday to discuss their plans to create a center for joint research into computer security and computational science.

The company will collaborate with INRIA, the French National Institute for Research in Computer Science and Control, to set up the

Microsoft-INRIA Institute for Computational Science at Orsay, on the outskirts of Paris, by early 2006. Microsoft and INRIA will share control of the center, Ballmer said.

The center will focus on two areas of research: the use of mathematical techniques to improve the reliability and security of software by proving that it will behave as expected, and computational science, the use of computing power to conduct experiments through simulation and modelling.

Ballmer and D’Aubert signed a memorandum of understanding setting out a framework for the venture. Andrew Herbert, head of Microsoft Research Ltd., the company’s lab in Cambridge, England, and Gilles Kahn, CEO of INRIA, also signed.

D’Aubert said he was pleased to have struck the deal with Microsoft, but added there was nothing unusual about such public-private partnerships in French academia, he said. French researchers in other domains have formed around 30 joint research centers with industry, and INRIA already participates in two joint research operations, with electronic equipment manufacturers Thomson SA and with Koninklijke Philips Electronics NV.

Microsoft and INRIA will jointly fund and staff the center under the terms of the agreement, which initially covers a period of four years, Kahn said. The lab will host around 30 staff, a mix of scientists and research students, he said.

Neither side would be drawn on the cost of the new lab. Herbert ventured only that the lab will be comparable in size to one Microsoft is setting up with the University of Trento, in Italy.

While the agreement signed Tuesday sets out basic terms, some things remain to be decided, including who exactly will own the commercial rights to results of the research.

“We’re in the process of discussing the conditions which will allow Microsoft Research and INRIA to work together,” Kahn said. “Conditions aren’t the same in the scientific community as they are in the commercial world. We’re working on something which will suit the scientific world and include the possibility to distribute the product of our research in the form of open-source software,” Kahn said.

INRIA’s researchers are already known for their contributions to the open-source software community, including their work on the Jonas application server, a Java message server called Joram, and a compiler for the Eiffel programming language.

Herbert elaborated on the theme of open source: “In many cases I’m sure that we will decide that open source is what we’d like to do. In other cases, it may be a commercial license,” he said.

Ballmer added that the management board of the research center will have the final word on the terms under which the fruits of the research are licensed. “We will respect its choice,” he said.