When the European Commission isn't occupied with important duties such as regulating banana curvature, it likes to turn its attention to large companies with significant market share. EU regulators are concerned about the implications of Oracle's pending acquisition of Sun, a $7.4 billion deal that could significantly reshape the enterprise IT market. The EC has temporarily halted the acquisition and is preparing to launch an antitrust inquiry to determine if the sale should be permitted to go forward.
At the heart of the controversy is MySQL, the popular open source database software that Sun acquired last year. EC commissioner Neelie Kroes says that the absorption of leading open source database software by a company that sells competing proprietary database requires close scrutiny. Specifically, the commissioner fears that Oracle will discontinue ongoing development of MySQL, reducing the choices that are available to consumers and potentially forcing users to buy the database giant's more costly enterprise solutions.
In an economic climate that is encouraging companies to cut costs by adopting open source software solutions, the rapid growth of MySQL has the potential to cannibalize Oracle's lucrative database business. It's still entirely unclear if Oracle intends to kill MySQL or capitalize on the open source trend by making MySQL a core part of its business. Oracle could also simply boost commercial MySQL support contract costs to a level that makes the open source option unappetizing for commercial users. The uncertainty surrounding this issue has compelled regulators to put a hold on the acquisition. The Associated Press reports that the EU is exploring potential remedies such as forcing the MySQL division to be sold off separately to a different buyer.
Although Oracle's acquisition of Sun does represent a massive stroke of consolidation for the database market, it's hard to believe that Oracle could truly kill off MySQL even if it really wanted to. Much like the mythical Hydra, extremely popular open source software projects are highly resilient and possess a remarkable ability to reconstitute themselves.
Amid the ambiguity that afflicts Oracle's plans for the future of MySQL, a number of third-party vendors with close ties to the open source project have stepped up and professed a strong commitment to shepherding future development by maintaining community-oriented forks. Several of these companies have jointly established an organization called the Open Database Alliance which promises to provide a vendor-neutral environment for coordinating this effort.
The lead mastermind behind the alliance is Monty Widenius, one of the original cofounders of MySQL. Widenius abandoned his development role at Sun last year, citing frustration with release management practices and what he viewed as poor engineering standards that were applied to MySQL following its acquisition by Sun. He founded his own company called Monty Program Ab which focuses on building the MariaDB storage engine, a MySQL replacement based on the original source code.
Widenius hopes that Oracle will be open to collaborating with the community in a positive way, but he says that he is fully prepared to provide an alternate path forward for the current MySQL community and third-party vendor ecosystem if Oracle decides to play mean or take its toys and go home.
The evidence strongly suggests that the open source database will live on regardless of what Oracle decides to do. Regardless of the project's strong capacity to sustain itself, there are still ways in which the acquisition holds the potential for abuse. We talked to Monty Program Ab Chief Community and Communications Officer Kurt von Finck to get his perspective on the EU's concerns.
Von Finck points out that MySQL's licensing model gives the copyright holder a higher level of control than the rest of the community and the exclusive ability to provide certain kinds of products and services that third-party vendors cannot. This means that Oracle's acquisition of Sun would still have significant implications for competition in the database market.
"Monty Program has forked the GPL version of MySQL. That precludes us from developing certain types of business. Like dual-licensing, or creating commercial, embeddable solutions. Anything we do will have to be GPL'ed. Oracle does not have this constraint," he explained. "If Oracle were to release MySQL under a different license, say the Apache license, this issue would be mitigated to an extent. But for now, Oracle has many more avenues of [MySQL-related] business and revenue than do others."
I asked von Finck if he thinks Oracle will drop MySQL development. He declined to speculate about Oracle's specific plans, but he believes that the EC could play a role in ensuring that the acquisition doesn't lead to a decline in consumer choice.
"It's clear that Oracle is a smart company. And the goal of any smart company is to return value to their shareholders. In this context, if MySQL was seen by Oracle to be cannibalizing their core business and revenue stream, I think there are quite a few actions they could take that would not resonate well with open source thought leaders, MySQL users, or individuals that value a competitive market," he said. "There are certainly steps that could be taken to ensure that the acquisition of the world's most popular open-source database by the world's largest commercial database vendor do not remove choice for users and ensure a viable and competitive database marketplace."
The antitrust issue is highly complex, but one thing is very clear: the delay for Oracle and Sun will be very costly. While the acquisition hangs in limbo, IBM is vigorously cannibalizing Sun's server business and proudly touting the migration statistics. By the time that the EU regulators complete their review in January, the bones could be picked clean.
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