Oracle faces opposition in Europe

SOON, AFTER MONTHS of European scrutiny, a decision will be made on whether Oracle will be allowed to purchase Sun Microsystems for $7 billion. The European Commision will make its decision on 27th January.

Although the acquisition has already been approved in the US, European regulators have expressed concerns about the appropriateness of the purchase, and have subjected it to microscopic scrutiny. It has been a drawn out process and one that all parties, from Oracle and Sun through open software groups to end-users, would like to see completed. We don't know how it will end, but we know that the EU has set itself a deadline and for now at least, it is still sticking to that.

However, it appears that the EU Commission is looking to gather some more information as it nears the end of its investigation. Oracle faces opposition from amongst others Michael Widenius, the founder of the dual-licensed MySQL database system, and now ZDNet blogger Mary Jo Foley has confirmed that Microsoft will be participating in the hearings too.

We "can confirm participation at the hearing and that the company has previously responded to inquiry from the Commission about the deal," said a Microsoft spokesperson. We don't know how the Vole will respond, but we think it unlikely that the firm will say much in Oracle's favour. It'll also be nice to be on the other end of a European antitrust investigation for once, we imagine.

SAP isn't keen either, according to Dow Jones, which said that Ericsson, as a MySQL user, had something to say too. The two-day hearing starts today.

Meanwhile, according to a report in the Financial Times, other rivals already believe that the deal is a sure thing. The paper quotes Steve Mills, head of IBM's software division, as saying that the Sun Microsystems purchase does not raise antitrust issues, at least not any worth bothering about, and that the EU inquiry is likely to end soon and in Oracle's favour.

MySQL, though at the centre of a lot of controversy, doesn't really raise much interest down at IBM apparently, and Mills is quoted as saying, "It's certainly not the most sophisticated database in the marketplace. It's not used for sophisticated query and analysis things. MySQL comes in at the bottom of the market. There is a lot of 'freeware' out there today."

Elsewhere Eben Moglen, the lawyer charged with enforcing the GNU General Public License on behalf of the Free Software Foundation, also voiced his opinion. In a missive to the EC, Moglen warned regulators that their analysis and focus on the future of MySQL so far has been flawed. Oh.

Moglen had been picking over the ECs list of objections at its request, and put pen to paper on the 19th November. He must have since realised that others should know this, as apparently this morning he handed a copy over to Reuters.

"The issues raised (by the commission) concerning the GPLv2 status of the MySQL code base do not warrant a conclusion that this transaction threatens significant anti-competitive consequences," he said, explaining that the terms of the GPL prevent anyone from riding roughshod over it.

Moglen should know, for he has been looking after the interests of the GPL since 1994. µ