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18 February 2010
Mission France
by James Ramey
CodeWeavers is now preparing to become a French citizen.  Like French fries, French cut green beans, and French Bread, CodeWeavers is going to have a French presence.  We are in the process of releasing our new French based CodeWeavers website with native support for French speaking customers.  Its a radical departure for our company.  Like other software developers, we harbored the belief that a distribution network made up of value added resellers and various partners was the more logical means for distributing our software to the masses (especially the foreign masses).  This 'acceptable means for business' is being challenged by the available technology.  With a VoIP phone, a website written in said foreign language, a product written in said foreign language, and an indigenous support team, CodeWeavers can essentially provide exceptional support to specific geographic markets.  Is this the death of the reseller, probably not; but, it does provide foreign customers (in this case French foreign customers) with direct access to our company.  However, we think that providing a better customer experience is the future for our company.

France is an interesting market for us which is why we're testing this theory here first.  France has a high per capita income, has a high rate of adoption for technology (both Linux and Mac), and is incredibly nationalistic for all things French.  As such, we believe that a localized software with localized service and support for France should do very well.  Our mission is to determine if technology trumps a true local presence.  I'll keep you updated so keep coming back.

About James B. Ramey
James B. Ramey is the CEO of CodeWeavers. His life long love of video gaming started at the tender age of six with an Atari 2600 and evolved over time to include Nintendo, Super Nintendo, Apple Mac IIc, Windows PC, and MacBook Pro. When not fiddling with technology, James enjoys cooking, travel, debating politics in the office, and spending time with his wife, daughter, and their two rescue dogs. For the past 20 years, James has worked with clients around the world in best implementing technology to maximize a return on their investment. He is a graduate of Moorhead State University and earned his MBA from the University of Phoenix. You can find James on Twitter at @jbramey.

The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.

tom.dewilde

"Like French fries, French cut green beans, and French Bread"

French fries are not from France, but from Belgium! You should know the history!
On the other side, the French language is only on number 7 on the list of most used languages on this world.
So your choice for creating a French website/support doesn't make sense if you don't do that for Chinese, Spanish, Russian, etc, which languages are more used in this world.
Or are you saying that people not speaking English or French shouldn't pay the same amount of money anymore for Crossover products, as they don't get the same level of support?

Posted 2010-04-27 13:13
#1
Tost

Correct Tom!
starting from now, I won't buy any codeweavers product anymore, as they only focus on certain people which speak a certain language!
Racism they call that!

Posted 2010-06-06 11:06
#2
Artist Formally Known as Dot

Oh yes, and rah-rah darlings...here I am, an advocate, and english is my native tongue. And yet, the codeweavers site is so accommodating, I've already begun to add not only english content to my advocated applications, but I'm also adding French, Dutch, and Swedish (and will add other languages as well as soon as I can find people willing to translate stuff)...and funnily enough, a lot of the translations I'm getting done are coming from people who DON'T EVEN USE CROSSOVER -- they're more interested in their
National pride and helping me help others of their locale/language who actually -do- use Crossover.

Now...what was your point again? (^B

Posted 2010-06-06 11:47
#3
Klinke

@Don: If you need help I can translate from english to german.
ICQ: 193787197
jabber: snew@jabber.ccc.de

Posted 2010-06-06 12:53
#4
Artist Formally Known as Dot

@Klinke -- thank you very much for your kind offer ; I'll contact
you via email and explain the sorts of things I'm looking to add
to my apps/c4p profiles to make them appealing/easy to use for other
peoples' locales and languages.

Posted 2010-06-06 13:29
#5
CHICANDARD

comment retrouver la clé d'enregistrement ?
Merci

Posted 2014-01-17 19:15
#6
J-P Simard 22

CHICANDARD wrote:

comment retrouver la clé d'enregistrement ?
Merci

Probablement dans "my orders", ce qui sera sous peu en langue française apparemment. Pour ma part, je ne me rappelle pas avoir eu de clé. Je me sert de mon courriel et de mon mot de passe, rien de plus. Si vous êtes sous Mac, c'est probablement différent, et n'étant pas certain, je recommande d'écrire un courriel à info@codeweavers.com.

As per the comment that French is only the 7th language, perhaps you should have paid attention about France being a rich market, if not a big one. Being in Quebec, and of French descent, yes we are proud of our language and our culture. I appreciate to function in French when ever possible, and although I have no problems with English, I do wholeheartedly prefer French. As a French speaker, I have to say that my preference is not only cultural, I find French to have beatiful subtilities that English simply does not provide.

I also find that the cultural imperialism of many English speakers on the web (many in the US oddly) to be slightly offensive. I live with it as it is a fact that most of the web is English only without complaint, but I notice that if French is mentionned, someone complains. This, ladies and gents, is of bad taste. If Codeweavers is thinks of France as of a sufficiently big market, let them take it.

That being said, as a advocate, I wish to offer my help with the french forum, if such a specific forum is created. If I need to do something specific to receive notification, once created, please advise.

Posted 2014-01-17 19:35
#7
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