I think they are little known in the UK (You have to excuse my poor English). There is not even media coverage on my issue anymore in Germany. Yesterday I read some UK press about German federal election at 22 September, so I would like to add this:

Did you know that German defense minister Scharping (Spd) had to leave because of an event organized by PR agency Hunzinger AG (hired by Microsoft)? Same happened to Green Party member Oezdemir (who received a personal loan of money of Hunzinger at a MS event). Hunzinger agency tried to do some dirty lobbying for MS. There was an initiative www.Bundestux.de to introduce Linux in the parliaments administration when MS declared to stop support for Windows NT 4. So Hunzinger invited the members of the parliamentary commission (see www.hunzinger.de for pictures of the lobbying events). MP Tauss (Spd) complained hard, unmasked lobbying. There was some reason why the study of the Ausschuss, made by Infora (MS related consulting firm, probably www.infora.de) wasn't published. Because of high public pressure the Ausschuss decided in favour of Linux at the server. Linux at the Desktop was said to be dropped because KDE (weww.kde.org) didn't support win-style Cut & paste by that time! The head of this commission, Mr. Bernd Kuester (spd) held even a speech at Linuxtag. Those in favour of MS (MP Otto (fdp), MP von Klaeden (cdu)) were invited to a Hunzinger high rank lobby event at 26th of Juli where the liberal politician Otto was keynote speaker. Note, Hunzinger’s ‘Parlamentarischer Abend’ means for MPs receiving money for the party and meeting very illustrious people.
Chancellor staff minister Bury (SPD), Schroeder’s press officer, is a strong Hunzinger affiliate, he was member of the board. Maybe he is the person responsible that the German Chancellor made a speech at CeBit 2002, in which he personal addressed Ballmer countless times: MS shall join the efforts of his government like Schulen ans Netz (connect schools to the net).

Well, Hunzinger doesn't work for MS anymore, during the scandal the relationship was terminated. Now ECC is responsible for MS lobbying. In the discrete lobbying business Hunzinger was know to be very open. He tried to sell his services to the companies and convince his shareholders, that’s why you just have to refer to official information of Hunzinger. But his unmasked talks about his business practices poisoned Hunzinger once his name became popular in the public. There was a letter published in the press (Handelblatt?) where Hunzinger told that he ‘placed an article’ for Microsoft in high recommended German media. Experts of PR-business and even the targeted newspaper denied it was possible. But we all know: it is.

The Chancellors administration is meanwhile a strong supporter of Linux: the Aegypten project was paid (see KDE 3.1 announcement www.kde.org), there are Brochures about Linux use you can get for free, the office responsible for federal it security is a strong Linux supporter, the Monopoly Commission switched to Linux and spoke against software patents. There are some about-Linux-pages on Schroeder’s party website (it is still there:  http://www.spdfraktion.de), don’t forget the coalition's proposal 14/5246 in favor of Open Source (Deutschlands Weg in die Informationsgesellschaft). Green party member Oezdimir also received cash from MS for his party. Receiving money is not illegal, but it has to be made public. And it’s a fact that the green party forgot the proposals of green youth: a federal OSS Foundation, it was in the program of the green party before the last election.

OSS Supporters and netactivists are only afraid of the patent lawyers in Brussels and a change of Chancellor Schroeder to his right wing Challenger CDU-Stoiber and that the switch to open source in state will be too slow (still some resistance of conservative office workers).

There is a 'planned hunzinger suicide' conspiration theory: MS seed false information against Scharping in order to harm the reelection of Schroeder, that’s because no one of the conservative participants was mentioned in the Hunzinger scandal. Even Moritz Hunzinger himself, founder of new economy firm Hunzinger, is a member of CDU, the conservative party. After the Hunzinger-Scharping scandal the SPD lost a couple of voters in the polls. The material presented against Scharping was well known before, but no journalist found it worth to be published. About a year earlier Hunzinger gave some swimming pool pictures to the press, which presented Scharping in Mallorca with his girl friend, and this got very bad press. It was combined with a 'flight affair': The opposition party, the CDU tried to undermine Scharping, who (formally correct) returned to his holiday in Mallorca and took a plane to Kosovo the next day (instead of staying in Berlin). Of course Scharping procedure was more expensive. A calculated flight hour of the German Flugbereitschaft isn't cheap at all. Imagine the American President to take business class instead of Airforce one...
Only the horrible event of the 11th September rescued Scharping, Germany calmed down and he could stay in office. So when the Hunzinger story was in the press Schroeder had to drop his defense minister Scharping very rapidly. But still there is yet no proof that Scharping made anything that justifies his replacement.

But it is very easy to find out more: try google: Hunzinger + MS


Postscriptum: A local court had punished Moritz Hunzinger because of financial market manipulation long before the event. That didn’t prevent the politicians of the parties to enter his events.

PostscriptumII: Some media activists posted at indymedia.de some official Hunzinger pictures from 1999. They show Moritz Hunzinger, CDU-Stoiber and Bill Gates.

PostscriptumIII: German Trade Unions own some big shares of Hunzinger AG

You are free to create your own conspiration theory because everybody hunzingered.