Oracle's Larry Ellison Weighs in on Sun and the EU--and He Should
by Sam Dean - Sep. 22, 2009Comments (1)- Related Blog Posts
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In a recent post called "Another Day, Another Reason to Fret Over MySQL's Fate," I noted that the European Commission's drawn out review of Oracle's proposed Sun Microsystems merger is doing a disservice to Sun, MySQL, MySQL users and open source in general. That post also mentioned the fact that Oracle has been very mum about its intent for MySQL--and that intent is what the European Commission is focused on as it delays or possibly seeks to obstruct the merger. This is the sum total of what Oracle has had to say publicly about MySQL: "MySQL will be an addition to Oracle's existing suite of database products." Wow, very informative.
Now, ZDNet and Barron's are reporting that Oracle Chairman Larry Ellison has a little more to say about the delay of the merger. He's not happy, and rightfully so.
Ellison recently spoke at a Churchill Club event in San Jose, and was interviewed there by former Motorola CEO--and former Sun executive--Ed Zander. He said that he thinks Europe will approve the merger after its delay, but noted unhappily that Sun Microsystems is losing about $100 million a month as the merger is delayed. Competitors such as IBM have been widely reported to be picking up Sun's customers. Ellison also noted that he won't dump MySQL--not to get approval of the merger, or following it.
ZDNet's Dana Blankenhorn asks if the EU is doing a disservice to open source with its long delay. I submit that it definitely is. There would already be important questions about MySQL's future even if the merger suddenly went through smoothly. With questions swirling about whether it will happen at all, the situation just gets murkier. It's incumbent upon the European Commisssion to say yay or nay on a timely basis, and the clock just keeps ticking for Sun and MySQL.
