EU 'optimistic' Oracle will see reason on MySQL
It's the open source, stoopid
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The European Union's competition chief has said she's "optimistic" a settlement can be reached with Oracle over its proposed $5.6bn acquisition of Sun Microsystems.
Neelie Kroes is reported to have told journalists: "Let's be optimistic, and let's find out if they could take us to a point that we say, 'OK, here we can take the result as a satisfying result for fair competition."
She added: "We do have serious complainers, so we have to do our job properly."
One of those "complainers" is probably SAP - Oracle's biggest Java and business applications rival. The plodding enterprise resource planning giant has started to shout about Oracle taking control of Java through the Java Community Process (JCP) rather than Oracle's ownership of MySQL, though.
Kroes was speaking after the EU Competition Commission this week listed its objections to Oracle's acquisition. In an official statement of objections, the EU said it was concerned about the impact on the competition by the enterprise-database giant owning the open-source MySQL.
Oracle immediately lambasted the EU in a statement that suggests Oracle can't see why it should respond to any of the Union's points. Oracle said the regulators' assessment revealed a "profound misunderstanding of both database competition and open source dynamics."
The giant dinged regulators for "not getting it, stoopid". "It is well understood by those knowledgeable about open source software that because MySQL is open source, it cannot be controlled by anyone. That is the whole point of open source," Oracle said.
That's the kind thinking floating around Silicon Valley, anyway, among proponents of the deal.
Code's one thing, though, brand is another. As former MySQL advisor Florian Mueller who wrote a positioning paper that helped persuade the EU to investigate, said recently, Oracle would hold the brand and the databases assets, and it would take somebody else years before any fork could reach the same kind of technical maturity and level of acceptance as MySQL.
Further, claiming that the two databases serve different markets – as Oracle and Sun have recently - is wrong. While Oracle serves massive operations MySQL cannot touch, Sun had begun using MySQL to try and siphon off smaller Oracle customers before the deal. ®
COMMENTS
EU is not getting it...
MySQL is owned by Sun and Sun has not been competing well in the marketplace for almost a decade...
If the MySQL brand was really a magic bullet, Sun would be able to compete...
Taking a commercially nonviable company, which many EU commentators suggest there is no hope for, and providing it to another company may make a monopoly in the EU's eyes, but not necessarily in the eyes of the rest of the world.
eu on oracle
Eu stance on the Orcale Sun deal is a typical backwards prehostoric approach. the next bit of decent software that comes out of the EU will be the first bit. the beurocratic so called gatekeepers with no sensical arguments is costing thousands op people their jobs around the world in this delay, can they comment on that. they have no backbone and integrity is totally at the whim of SAP & IBM. Oracle should show the middle finger and let them continue to play in the dark ages with DB2 and the likes.
It's the license, stupid.
Sure, MySQL is an important RDBMS. But, it is also open-source. Who cares if maybe, perhaps, possibly, potentially, the brand is important? Users will be able to tell Oracle to f*** off and fork, if they feel importantly enough about it. That's the whole point of open source. If that doesn't count here, where would it?
Blocking this on competition ground is lame (speaking as an ex-PeopleSoft employee, I think I have some personal history).
Sun is a failure, and has been so for years. Not technically, no. But commercially, yes. Don't believe me? Take a look at their annual operating income and compare it to their peers'. Yup, those pesky capitalist notions.
Let a better, less clueless company take over what's left. If Oracle wants it, let them have it. At least, don't invoke something as irrelevant as an open-sourced MySQL to block it. Who knows, Java and MySQL might even improve as a result (not holding my breath though).
I realize the European anti-trust commission guys might feel like they gotta do something to make it seem like they earn their pay, but this is the wrong tree.
p.s. When do we get Evil Larry/Good Larry icons?
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