In the ongoing process, where Oracle attempts to buy the whole SUN company, the EU commission gave today free hands to Oracle to deal with the SUN MySQL ownership. Oracle must deliver proof to the EU that Oracle owning MySQL does not harm the free competition. The CEO of MySQL, Jonathan Schwartz, said he is fine with that Oracle owns MySQL, but that makes it difficult for Oracle to proove that Oracle owning both Oracle database and MySQL database will not harm the competition.
There has been suggestions that Oracle could make the MySQL unit of SUN an independant opensource wing, but to deliver undisputable proof to the EU, it would be easier if Oracle would let MySQL go.
Oracle wants to keep MySQL though, as the Oracle CEO Larry Ellison said earlier that Oracle database is used for legacy applications, while MySQL is used for modern Web database applications.
SUN had to fire 3000 employees yesterday, since waiting for EU's acceptance and their demand of proof from Oracle costs them 100 million USD per month.
MySQL is a free opensource database engine, which beats Oracle database in speed, features and especially costs. It can be used also seamlessly with IBM Lotus Domino and Microsoft SharePoint to improve database technology in both systems. All huge global businesses use MySQL, including eBay, Amazon, so there is really no need for any other database engine in the world.
However, for small standalone apps, like games, SQLite is also an essential tool (free, opensource). It beats even MySQL in some speed aspects, and doesn't need any installation and dependancies. Also Firefox uses SQLite.
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| | Nathan T. Freeman
1 Friday, 23 October 2009 02:58:40 EET |
| | How do you prove lack of harm? Any argument that Oracle makes to the EU about why it wouldn't harm competitors is an argument for it's own shareholders about why it's a bad investment.
And it's USD 100 million per MONTH, not per day.
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| | Mika
2 Friday, 23 October 2009 04:00:08 EET |
| | Thanks, I fixed the scope.
I see 3 options for Oracle, which could make them proove that they don't use MySQL to reduce competition:
1) Declare MySQL as free and open source, just like SUN did
2) Exclude MySQL from the SUN company purchase, so that SUN still owns MySQL (shouldn't make any price difference, since it's free, LOL)
3) Keep MySQL, merge Oracle database engine benefits into it, shutdown MySQL, and provide a free version of the new Oracle database engine besides the commercial version (dangerous, but probably what Larry Ellison is after in the long run)
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