While the US Department of Justice has already given the green light to Sun’s purchase by Oracle, the European Commission is a little more weary about possible antitrust issues. Neelie Kroes, EU commissioner for competition, is especially worried about the future of Sun’s open source endeavours, specifically MySQL.
Kroes is worried about Oracle’s incentive to further develop MySQL. Oracle is the largest proprietary database software company, and Sun the leading open source database company. Kroes is worried that this deal could negatively affect consumer choice “when the world’s biggest proprietary database company proposes to take over the world’s leading open-source database company”.
“In the current economic context, all companies are looking for cost-effective (information-technology) solutions, and systems based on open-source software are increasingly emerging as viable alternatives to proprietary solutions,” Kroes explained, “The commission has to ensure that such alternatives would continue to be available.”
One of the prime reasons for concern for the EC is that the database market is a very concentrated one. Three companies, Microsoft, IBM, and Oracle, control about 85% of the market. Increasing adoption of MySQL could threaten Oracle’s business, which could lead to Oracle neglecting MySQL.
The EC has launched a deep investigation into this deal, but they reiterated that it may pass EU scrutiny without problems. If the EU’s investigation does turn up problems, then remedies will have to be conjured up; MySQL could be sold off, or the companies involved would have to make binding assurances about the future of MySQL.
Oracle and Sun had no comment on the EC probe.
While the US anti-trust regulators seem to have (willfully, perhaps) overlooked the fact that Oracle was mainly buying Sun in order to kill off the main free competitor to Oracle’s own core software offerings, it looks like those in Brussels are slightly more perceptive.
Now it only remains to be seen whether they have the guts to stand up to Big American Business and block the deal or not.
They can’t really kill off MySQL aside from it’s name. Already some of the main dev’s have left for forks of the project and it’s continuation.
With all respect to MySQL – I highly doubt that it is the reason why Oracle has bought Sun. It’s more about Java and the ability to provide end-to-end solutions (hardware, OS, applications) to compete with IBM.
MySQL will do just fine – most of its market share comes from non-paying users anyway, and the others can get support from ex-Sun/MySQL employees.
Get support from who? Can you list those companies providing support. This is a big concern I would say. I also don’t know if all the enterprise parts of MySQL were open sourced or not. While eventually the market might recover, there could be large ramifications if Oracle tries to kill MySQL later on.
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=MySQL+support+contract
3 pages in and already i see at least 4 companies that will commercially suport MsSQL
LOL… Smart ass… Joking aside, maybe Novell will take MySQL and package it with SuSE? Seing that they already provide support for MySQL. http://www.novell.com/products/support/mysql
I think it makes more sense to assume that Oracle purchased Sun for their OS so they can tweak oracle db to work better with 1 OS instead of supporting multiple *nix.
They already tweak it primarily for one OS – Linux; and they already have a distribution of Linux (Oracle’s Unbreakable Linux) based on Red Hat.
So wanting Solaris is not very likely. They already have that without having to spend billions to get it.
Oracle wants Sun for only one single reason – Java. Sun still holds the trademark and some essential copyright on Java.
Somehow, I highly doubt the driving reason for the purchase of Sun was to “kill off” MySQL.
A much more likely reason is that the purchase of Sun gives Oracle a fully integrated business: hardware, OS, Java, middleware, database, etc.
I find it more likely that MySQL will become “Oracle Lite” and used as a stepping-stone to the full Oracle DB. The migration path is pretty hard to beat:
* MySQL on Linux on x86
* MySQL on Solaris on x86
* MySQL on Solaris on SPARC
* Oracle on Solaris on SPARC
I wouldn’t be surprised to see Oracle start offering “database appliances” which are just custom SPARC boxes running Solaris tuned for Oracle.
Indeed. Although the evidence does suggest that Oracle has had its eye on a competitor to Oracle Lite (or whatever they call it) and a potential future competitor to Oracle Database:
Move: MySQL is basically a glorified filesystem… until they switch to InnoDB
Counter: Oracle buys Innobase.
Move: MySQL looks to building transactions, etc. into BerkeleyDB to get away from Oracle InnoDB.
Counter: Oracle buys Sleepycat, owner of BerkeleyDB.
Move: Little MySQL AB gets itself bought by big, powerful Sun.
Counter: Oracle buys Sun. Thus gaining better control over both MySQL and PostgreSQL.
Is MySQL being persecuted? Or is it just tough being an ant living in the domain of giant dinosaurs?
I’m sure that the rationale for Oracle’s purchase of Sun is quite complex, involving many factors. But their acquisitions do have a way of giving them better control of the OSS competition.
Edited 2009-09-03 22:54 UTC
You have the order of Berkley and Innodb backwards. BDB came first. You also didn’t include Falcon or maria.
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And yet, they bought out Sleepycat before they bought out InnoDB.
Exactly. BDB was part of the SleepyCat purchase, hence why the post above your says that BDB came first.
When using the word ‘appliance’ the word ‘cheap’ inevitably comes up. Well, apart from the thing they really want to sell – the Oracle database system. As such, they really want to commoditise the hardware and operating system to make the Oracle database system more attractive, hence Oracle’s activities with Linux on x86 hardware. Using Solaris and especially SPARC is so far removed from that strategy it isn’t even funny.
Edited 2009-09-04 11:02 UTC
If Oracle decides to end support of MySQL I am sure some other enterprising entity will step in to fill the need in the market. This is due to the fact that the code is Open Source. As others have already mentioned the code has already been forked. Once the EU regulators recognize this, the deal will be approved barring any other objections.
The main problem is professional backing. Certain kinds of specialized applications (like databases that not just anyone can write) require active support and development. And this is often best done by a company that has financial backing. This depends on the area, but like I say, SQL databases are quite specialized.
Think about usability advancements in Linux. It’s been slowly getting better, but it wasn’t until Canonical came alone that so many of the “annoying little details” (like GUI config tools for obscure facilities) started getting fixed. Spit and polish. But Canonical has a profit motive, and that’s a huge incentive to do that kind of work.
Certainly, it’s possible to profit from purely GPL code that you don’t own. Consider Red Hat. But it’s a more difficult business. It’s just that much easier if you own the original copyright and can license it commercially in ways that don’t conform to the GPL.
If the worst happens, the project will be forked since it’s open source.
Her big media splashes are part of her shadow campaign for EU president.
Oh well, she’s not the first to “prosecute” for political reasons. District attorneys in the US have often prosecuted bogus cased to win elections to higher office. Neelie is evidence that that foul practice goes on in Europe too.
Neelie is the same person who brought us Windows sans Media Player. What a great “victory” for consumers, eh? *cough*
And glad she did!.
Yes, it is a victory. Maybe I should quote the own Neelie:
Funny how when Europeans were given the option they weren’t flying off the shelf when it comes to money crossing the counter.
Edited 2009-09-04 07:43 UTC
It was a complete waste of time and resources. OEMs and consumers ignored the version of Windows without Media Player. How you can claim that’s a “victory” — however well-intentioned — is a mystery.
Windows-N or whatever that was called, was the result of the EC’s first, and rather naive, attempt at taming the beast. And yes, it was a joke.
Microsoft’s proposal to ship Windows 7 without any browser at all was aimed toward exploiting that weakness, should it still exist. (And I do have to give Microsoft credit for kicking the tires on that one.) But I think the EC has learned a lot since then. And, as we can easily see, they did not fall for it this time. The results of this round should be more interesting.
But of course, this thread is about Sun/Oracle. So I’ll stop now. 🙂
Edited 2009-09-04 22:01 UTC
You’re right that users simply didn’t care and the ruling was ineffective. But the big deal is not there. It set a precedent and was a point of inflection on European politics and private software. The legacy of this antitrust rule is that parliaments started to worry more about open standards and possibility of application lock-in. The French Assembly moving to mandriva, Netherlands implemented open document format in administration, serious reports were written considering the economical viability of free software implementations in institutions… There’s more institutional awareness of the implications of a software monopoly.
President of the European Council (there’s not a President of the European Unio, yet) and the Council, whose Directorate-General for Competition is Neelie kroes, are not directed elected but appointed. Only the Parliament is. So, I’m afraid she’s not seeking election for any office (she’s 68 anyway). Even if it were nobody would dare to run on the work done in an antitrust office on this side of the Atlantic. Council members are appointed for keeping countries powers balance on EU institutions, because of influence gained inside the EU Parliament, as a reward for having had a long and successful politic in-home career (I believe, Neelie’s case) and such.
Well, I’m certainly glad that *someone* is keeping an eye on these potential antitrust issues, rather than turning a blind eye to them like my country often does. In this case, I suspect that it will turn out that there is not that much of a problem. But an investigation is prudent and appropriate.
But then I wouldn’t ask or expect you to miss an opportunity to attack Ms. Kroes. Honestly, you are getting to be worse than the obsessive anti-Microsoft trolls around here. Think about it.
MySQL and oracle are comletely different things. Oracle has owned and sold support for berkleyDB for years and not ended it, why would they do it for mySQL?
As the more credible threat to Oracle Database, PostgreSQL probably would have more to worry about than MySQL does in that area.
Exactly. MySQL is what you reach for when an embedded db like berkley or sqlite isn’t enough, but you don’t need full RDBMS features like transactions and triggers. Postgres is what you use when you do need those things. Oracle is where you go when you are scaling your data tier vertically rather then horizontally, and you need rediculesly scalable data storage.
I would suggest that Oracle is often where companies go when management *thinks* they need those things.
Yeah. And should I remind, that Sun still holds a lot of people actively developing for PostgreSQL. In fact, they made their first move into the database space by hiring some core PostgreSQL people.
They’re both database systems and Oracle will inevitably get very jittery about what MySQL could become – a cheaper alternative to Oracle with all the features some management people ‘think’ that they need.
MySQL will inevitably become the illegitimate child that Oracle just doesn’t want to exist. At best it will become an Oracle Lite but it won’t be improved as MySQL has been over the years and it won’t be as well supported. They still hold the copyright and can make closed versions as they see fit. We can only hope that Postgres will continue as it has done and make people see the light.
Edited 2009-09-04 11:13 UTC
Total clowns…
IBM is now tearing the remaining life out of whats left as Sun remains frozen.
Antitrust against Oracle/Sun? Wake up EU – IBM is the one to watch out for, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, Microsoft wish they knew half of the tricks that the B in IBM uses.
This merger is all that saves us from IBM. At least since IBM turned down buying Sun, they can’t have a say on this.
Which would be why most of the world is using OS/2 while NT is left to rot on a small handful of devices?
…Or why Lotus Smart Suite is currently the industry standard office suite?
…Or why more developers use Eclipse rather than Visual Studio?
I could go on listing examples of excellent IBM products they have which failed to gain/retain market significance.
So in short: Once upon a time, you’d have a point, but IBM are no longer the dominating force and claiming that Microsoft envy IBMs business stratergys/products is a little misguided.
Edited 2009-09-04 12:19 UTC
Do you know the statistics? Or are trying to make them up and think they are real? The fact is, that we do not know how many people use Eclipse over VS. Eclipse is used in far more products than just Eclipse Java IDE.
Microsoft knows a lot of strategy and tactics used at IBM. In fact most tactics Microsoft used were actually from IBM originally. And Microsoft probably do envy IBM for their stranglehold on the mainframe market.
I don’t have any stats, but given it’s the developers choice for Windows development (both desktop and mobile platforms) and given how significant Windows’ market share is, I think it’s a fairly safe assumption.
Let’s also not forget that MS VS is also used for Visual Basic (which has a huge following in education (for teaching) and corporate organisations (for rapid application prototyping), reporting in MS SQL Server and a whole host of other languages / dialects.
I know, I personally use Eclipse C++ IDE.
IBM have borrowed just as many trading ideas from other corporations as MS have.
But all that is besides the point as it doesn’t matter who the teacher is – all that matters is who trades the best. And in this instance it’s MS and not IBM (like the original poster suggested).
Possibly, but (in terms of the mainframe market) I’d suggest MS see Linux/UNIX as a bigger competitor than IBM specifically because MS is predominantly a software business and Linux/UNIX is the direct competitor to MSs own server suite.
I also wasn’t aware that IBM currently have such a dominance that could have been described as a “stranglehold”.
Got any sources? (not trying to dismiss your claim, I just have a g33ky interest in servers)
This is a really interesting case in the open source world. MySQL’s founder company MySQL AB was a pure winner in the business world. It was worth about $ 10 mln in 2004, $ 60 mln in 2006 and acquired by Sun Microsystems in 2008 for approximately $ 1 billion. The story: http://www.openeo.biz/mysql-ab/
I think now is the time to test the project it self. How really open source was it. As we all know open source isn’t just about releasing the sources on the GPL license. It’s also about the community driven development. The MySQL project seemed to have a more ‘in-house development, community feedback’ organizational structure with most of the development done by the developers hired by MySQL AB. That’s why I wonder if the community that helped those developers and the core teammates still with the project are strong enough to pool a decent fork together or to keep the original project running with less founds from Oracle.
A guest time will tell.
If the EU wants to have cheap open source software maintained and available, maybe they should buy and maintain the MySQL division of Sun. Or atleast pay Oracle money every year to spend money behind the development/Maintenance of the database so that Oracle can sell the DB as a cheap/Free open source alternative.
Why do you think SUN went bankrupt — OpenSource and Free dont really go well with Share price and company revenues.
How do you know? Have you done an extensive study on this particular issue? Have you looked at the reasons why Sun are where they are? ie: What did or didn’t they do that led them to this current situation?
I’m asking because Red Hat and Novell seem to contradict your point of view.
Unfortunately FredFlintStone can’t work his head around the idea that correlation doesn’t equal causation; Sun’s decline has nothing to do with open source and everything to do with crap management – their lack of vision and direction, a lack of a backbone to kick elements out of the organisation that sabotaged trying to get Solaris on x86 as a first class product equal to the SPARC version, x86 having an equal marketing budget, and slowing down (to eventually wear down advocates) when it came to open sourcing Java and OpenSolaris.
Sun still suffers from the same problems today with the only saving grace is the fact that it is now hidden within a larger organisation – I hope Larry purges all the management out of Sun before their stupidity infect and pull down Oracle.
Edited 2009-09-04 07:50 UTC
I’m a little uncertain what you mean by vision, as many of Sun’s products have been pretty pioneering compared to many of their competitors (ZFS, dtrace, etc)
They are buzz words – technology need to be put into a real world setting and need to be marketed to the people who make decisions. Look where they marketed these ideas and how they marketed them. I saw one ad by Sun and I wanted to kill myself they were that bad. It might get the geek working in the IS office excited but he isn’t making the decision – the manager up stairs whose coffee table consists of golf and management magazines.
Vision is about setting a target and saying, “how do we get there” – Sun’s line up has no integration; they’re floating around with no effort to making sure they all work together to bring about a cohesive product line up. Why isn’t there integration between OpenOffice.org and their server product line? Why isn’t there a collaboration server sitting on top of Glass Fish that integrates into the Directory Server where the client can link their openoffice.org session into the server to do collaborative work?
Sun seems to be a company who have 12 products plonked on a shelf and no effort to selling it as a complete integrated package; no effort to make all of it easily managed through one single management console. Things aren’t going change because their organisation is riddled from top to bottom full of yes men and individuals who aren’t willing to stand up put out a bold vision then strive towards it in a confident fashion; one only needed to look at Jonathan Schwartz who completely lacks any confidence when he speaks. When I hear him speaking he sounds like he is about to say, “I’d rather not have to do this – I want to be at home watching tv and eating some toasted sandwiches”. That is the impression I get from all the Sun management; weak, uninspiring, visionless, navel glazing individuals.
Edited 2009-09-04 14:39 UTC
I see. Thanks for explaining that.
Neither Red Hat or Novell are as profitable as Google, Microsoft, Adobe, Cisco, IBM, Apple, Oracle, and many others. Just compare the P/E of both to other tech companies.
MySQL is open source and free. I dont see how Oracle can get an “unhealthy control over the Database market”, if the products are free and open source? You just fork it if you wish?
I think your sentence should be:
You may fork it if you are insane and can afford it.