Oracle's Sun acquisition war continues

ORACLE'S PURCHASE of Sun might hinge on arguments being made to the European Commission opposing its acquisition of MySQL, which may have ulterior motives.

The EU Commission has the authority to demand a divestiture of MySQL to ensure that MySQL would operate independently or be sold to a different company that would not face the same possible conflicts of interest as Oracle does.

In the usual in-depth investigative work by Groklaw, some of the submitted material given to the EU Commission that has delayed the approval of the buy-out and sparked this investigation into a MySQL divestiture appears to have come from Micorosft stalwarts, suggesting to those with a speculative turn of mind that Microsoft is actively seeking to scuttle the deal or even purchase MySQL for itself.

It's been suggested that Michael 'Monty' Widenius' attack on Oracle's proposed capture of MySQL has less to do with the license arguments he's using to criticise the proposed purchase and more to do with his affiliation with Microsoft, as advisor to Microsoft's new Codeplex Foundation, and his own self-interest.

It has also been suggested that the co-conspirator Florian Mueller has a vested interest, considering his previous moves to delay the adoption of Linux by the city of Munich.

However, speaking directly to the Inquirer, Monty was given the opportunity to voice his opinion regarding these allegations.

"To make things clear, I have not ever been paid anything from Microsoft and I have no relationship with them. The Codeplex foundation is an independent organization from Microsoft; It's true that a lot of the people on it are still paid by Microsoft, but that is supposed to change soon," wrote Widenius.

Monty also expanded upon his support for Codeplex, stating:

"What is interesting with the Codeplex foundation is that if it is, what Microsoft claims it is, it will make it easy for people employed by Microsoft to actively participate with Open Source. This would be a great mind set change for Microsoft and as an Open Source/Free Software advocate I want to be sure that they do it right and there is no hidden agenda in the Foundation. The reason for me to accept to be on the Codeplex Advisory board was that it gives me a chance to ensure the above. I also believe that the more we get Microsoft employees (and actually any company) engaged in Open Source, the better it will be for Open Source projects in general."

Still, Microsoft can be seen to have a massive vested interest in MySQL and whoever ultimately owns it. According to Gartner, via Reuters, SQL Server had a 18.1 per cent market share in 2008 compared to Oracle's 48.6 per cent continued dominance (this is the market share for 'paid for' databases, thus MySQL hardly figures in Gartner's report). Thus Microsoft is seriously lagging in the commercial database market.

Forrester Research published a study in 2008 that stated "MySQL has the highest adoption and growth. MySQL continues to have the largest mind-share in the open source database market and has the highest number of paying customers for product support: an estimated 16,000." MySQL would enable Microsoft to take a serious wedge of that market share if the company could monetize the product further, whilst enabling it to be the principal database provider for SMBs, with SQL Server squarely aimed at the enterprise.

However Microsoft's databases are, like the majority of Microsoft's solutions, dependent on other underlying Microsoft software products, that is, the operating system, which although Microsoft gains further sales, limits the company to Microsoft-only platforms. Microsoft might wish to spread its database wings further, allowing continued use of MySQL on other platforms, whilst making it more and more Windows 'friendly' over time. No doubt PostgresSQL or a MySQL fork such as MariaDB would then capture an even greater share of the market. Mono and MySQL anyone?

Despite the obvious rationale for Microsoft to purchase MySQL and gain considerable market presence, it seems unlikely due to the inherent software stack Microsoft likes to supply, and the fact the company has hardly leapt head-over-heals to embrace open source software, despite CodePlex. Instead, it's more likely Microsoft simply sees Oracle plus MySQL as a considerable threat to its SQL Server Express plus SQL Server market-share, and so it should.

Indeed, Michael 'Monty' Widenius spoke further with the Inquirer regarding any potential Microsoft purchase of MySQL, saying:

"About Microsoft buying MySQL - (I) Don't think this is a realistic scenario. They would have the same problems with the regulators as Oracle have had about MySQL. As far as I know, Microsoft has never shown any interest in buying MySQL. I don't think this has changed now. I also don't think Sun would like to take a chance to sell MySQL to Microsoft and have to again go through the thing they have done with EC."

Thus, though Microsoft probably has little vested interest in purchasing MySQL for itself, Microsoft is pulling all of its resources into use to ensure that the EU Commission - its last chance to stop the deal from going through - brokers an agreement with Oracle to sell off MySQL to an organisation with less weight than Oracle, and one with a software stack considerably less than its own.

The main argument that is being made is not that Microsoft wants MySQL, but Microsoft doesn't want Oracle to have MySQL and that the licensing arguments made by Widenius and Mueller smell more of Microsoft FUD than of any concrete rationale as to why Oracle shouldn't own the open source database. Quotes from their combined press release appear vicious and overly rhetorical, for example the use of the word "infection" with regards to the GPL. Their press release reads:

"The 'copyleft/infection' principle of the GPL license represents a particular obstacle not only to revenue generation by the fork vendor but also to the overall adoption and market penetration of MySQL, MySQL forks and MySQL storage engines."

The opposition using this GPL FUD doesn't explain how these license choices are in any way attributable to Oracle, why it's any different from Sun owning MySQL, and why any other buyer would subsequently guarantee any change to the way MySQL is currently licensed.

In its defence Oracle has maintained active development of projects brought in-house via acquisition, namely BerkeleyDB and InnoDB, and many defenders of Oracle don't see why the company would actively balk at furthering MySQL, nor why MySQL's current licensing scheme is suddenly such an issue.

And fortunately for Oracle, not everyone is against its acquisition of MySQL. Both Groklaw and Carlo Piana, among others, are advocates of the merger as a whole, and both produce convincing arguments, possibly more convincing than those of Richard Stallman, Monty Widenius and Florian Mueller. µ