People continue to line up on both sides of the Oracle/Sun
Microsystems-versus-European Commission dispute about the future of MySQL.
The Oracle Applications Users Group (OAUG), the world's largest knowledge base
for Oracle applications users, said Dec. 1 that it has sent a letter to the
European Commission supporting the acquisition of Sun, which owns the source
code and steers the development community of MySQL, Oracle's largest
open-source competitor.
The commission, which serves as the law enforcement body of the European Union,
is due to make a decision Jan. 27,
2010, about whether to sanction the $7.4 billion acquisition, so
Oracle can continue to do business in the 27 EU countries. Oracle does about 20
percent of its business in that market.
In the letter, OAUG President Raymond Payne wrote that Oracle's acquisition of
Sun would simplify the integration process associated with merging several
technologies, supporting all activities, from hardware to the operating system
to middleware to the applications and the database. This would strongly benefit
any company or organization working with Oracle-related products, Payne wrote.
"Our international users group strongly believes Oracle consistently
maintains and enhances the use of open standards and expects a continued
commitment to these principles with regard to MySQL and other products in the
Sun family," Payne wrote. "Oracle's commitment and continued
contributions to the open source community have turned Open Source products
into stable and viable solutions for enterprise businesses. Oracle's
acquisition of Sun will be no exception to its usual sound acquisition
process."
In contrast to the EC's current opinion, Payne wrote that the OAUG believes the
transaction "will only increase competition and innovation. The OAUG also
believes that no one benefits from further delay that unwarranted uncertainty
may bring regarding the European Commission's decision on whether or not to
allow the acquisition to occur."
Oracle is scheduled
to argue its case Dec. 10 to EC commissioners that annexing Sun would not
materially affect the world's enterprise parallel database market. The
European-born MySQL database is an important component in running enterprise
Websites.
On Nov. 11, the 20,000-member Independent Oracle Users Group (IOUG) sent their
own letter to EC Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes making
it clear they support the sale. Former MySQL CEO
Marten Mickos has
come out in favor of the acquisition, saying that MySQL's open-source
community will keep it an independent technology.
Others do not agree. In October, digital civil liberties organization Open
Rights Group, Knowledge Ecology International, and free and open-source
software activist Richard Stallman told the EC they are concerned about
Oracle's possible squashing of competition in the database market.
Florian Mueller, an open-source activist and former MySQL business adviser
who is lobbying for MySQL creator Michael (Monty) Widenius, has been a high-visibility
opponent of the deal. He and Widenius believe that Oracle owning MySQL
through its acquisition of Sun is a colossal conflict of interest, since Oracle
would become the new owner of its biggest open-source competitor.
Oracle CEO and founder Larry Ellison doesn't
see it this way at all, saying at the recent Oracle OpenWorld conference in San
Francisco that "MySQL in no way competes with our databases. It has its
own market and following. The main competitor is Microsoft [SQL Server], and
that's OK by us."
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