In 2000, the Swiss ‘price supervisor’ Werner Marti criticised Microsoft for unfair license prices. No wonder, this role in Swiss administration has to take care that market prices are reasonable and that monopolies are not missused by greedy companies. While so far, the position of the Preisüberwacher was executed with great tenacity, the new person - Stefan Meierhans - who is honoured with this duty runs into the danger of weakening anti-trust in Switzerland. We, /ch/open, and several other organizations (Free Software Foundation Europe, Digitale Allmend, Wilhelm Tux, The Alternative, and Linux User Group Oberwallis) doubt the independence of Meierhans, top manager within Microsoft Switzerland. Therefore we sent out a press release (PDF, ODT) stating our concerns, demanding explanation of the Bundesrat for this decision and transparency by Meierhans how he will distance himself from his current employer.

Update 2008-06-19: It seems like the press release had hit the mark - basically every Swiss IT online news channel and even heise Germany did take up our message: Heise, Netzwoche, Computerworld, PCtipp, iTReseller, InfoWeek, and inside-it.ch.