On Monday of last week, we published an article by a former IT employee at PA Consulting Group.

PA Consulting has sent us a detailed rebuttal of the claims made in the article. We are happy to set the record straight. And we're sorry for getting it wrong in the first place.

Here are the most important points that PA makes:

PA is demonstrably not hostile to free software, nor does it have any special relationship with Microsoft beyond the usual purchasing agreements.

The consultancy has some of the leading European exponents of Open Systems working as consultants, including a long time contributor to the Open Source project Emacs. It points out that it has several major assignments implemented using Open Systems. And that as long ago as 1999 it predicted that Linux would be a major platform.

PA also has several people within the internal IT department working on Linux and it has a lively in-house Open Source SIG. It has a number of Linux servers running on its internal networks in addition to the FTP server mentioned (and FTP has never been banned as alleged in the article, merely moved to a firewalled DMZ).

On a separate note, the article implied that PA's UK staff were anti-American. We accept that this is not the case. Apologies all around.