Wednesday 11 November 2009

EU Commitee against Sun-aqcuisition

As I, honestly, expected the EU Commitee is against the aqcquistition of Sun by Oracle. This can be read (in Dutch) here. Main issue is the position of the MySql database. Oracle wants to keep it, but it would make Oracle not only the biggest in commercial databases but also in OpenSource.
It does impose a significant delay in the acquisition. Oracle expresses that the issues of the European Commitee are based on a misunderstanding on the database and open source marketed.

I'm curious how they see that, because it is not expressed in the quoted article.
Also the American department of Justice made explicitly clear that it approved while they're convinced that MySql does not damage the competition in the database market.

I find it curious though that the acquisition of a commercial company by another commercial company is under investigation/restriction because of a non-commercial product. I understand that the MySql holding company is in fact commercial. But you and I and every one who wants to do it can get a fork of the MySql source and start our own database. Provided that we know C++ (I conveniently assume that MySql is written in C++) , what in my case is quite rusty, and understand the sources.

So I would ask that if Oracle promises that they embrace MySql lovely caring, what would be the issue here then? And EU could just put some preconditions on the take-over. And sanctions if in a later stage Oracle turns out to not meeting those.
But then: I'm not so political. And I'm in a struggle: I'm pretty proud that one of the major forces in these matters on European Level is a Dutch woman, but at the other hand I've a history with Oracle. And I think the take over would be a good one. Or at least an interesting one. For Sun, Oracle and the ICT market.

Yesterday I found that Oracle wants to keep Sun's Glassfish Appserver as a referential implementation of J2EE. I take it with for example the SOAP toolstack Metro. Which is nice, because then Oracle has three app-servers if I'm counting right:
  • OC4j (originally from Orion), still base of the J2EE parts of E-Business Suite, and probably for years to come.
  • Weblogic (originally from BEA)
  • Glassfish (originally from Sun)
I heard from a colleague who attended the DBA-day of the Dutch Oracle User Grouop that Oracle would not go further with VirtualBox. That would be a pity I think. I don't think it means that it ceases to exist. But a desktop virtualization tool would nicely extent Oracle's virtualization portfolio. Oracle might be focussing on the Server market. But then, what about StarOffice/OpenOffice for example?

Well questions enough. And a nice subject to philosophize further upon. But to remember/rephrase a phrase from Mike Oldfields "Songs of a distant earth": "Only time will tell"...

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