EU will force MySQL out of Oracle/Sun merger
Nov 11th 2009vesterliMySQL & oracle xe
In Europe, many people love Open Source with its connotations of sharing and village co-operatives. On the other hand, many Europeans don’t like the big, successful American companies (witness the ritual McDonalds-bashing).
This emotional preference for Open Source to big American companies is why the EU competition authorities have decided to protest against Oracle acquiring MySQL.
So what will happen? In my opinion, Larry will huff and puff, but in the end he will set up a semi-independent foundation and give it MySQL.
What will this mean? To Oracle, nothing (except perhaps a very small dent in Larry’s ego ;-). Oracle are not big on free databases anyway - they have their own free Oracle XE, but they are letting it lag five years behind the paid version. To MySQL, this represents a squandered opportunity. Larry could spend twice what Sun did and it would still be less than what he spends on a new carbon-fibre mast. Instead, MySQL will end up starved of investment and will be overtaken by various forks like Amazons RDS.
Comments welcome.