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By Michael Neubarth
When Oracle announced an agreement to acquire Sun Microsystems for $7.4 billion on April 20, 2009, the news triggered a wave of speculation about the fate of the MySQL database, one of the key assets in the deal.
As Ted Dziuba wrote in The Register on April 27, 2009: “When Oracle bought Sun last week, the MySQL community collectively curled its lip into a worried sneer. Is Oracle going to kill MySQL? We'll have to wait and see.”
Similarly, Bryan Richard on linux-mag.com wrote on April 20, 2009, wrote: “Did the world’s most popular open source database just get put on life support. Or have its plug pulled?”
An Internetnews.com report on April 20, 2009, bore the headline “Oracle buys Sun. Is MySQL doomed? Java? Solaris?”
Among the most pessimistic was Larry Dignan, editor-in-chief of ZDNet, who in his blog on April 20, 2009, wrote: “Oracle gets to kill MySQL. There’s no way Ellison will let that open source database mess with the margins of his database. MySQL at best will wither from neglect. In any case, MySQL is MyToast.”
EC Says Halt
The belief that Oracle might have bad intentions towards MySQL also was reached by the European Commission (EC), which withheld its approval of the deal. While the U.S. Department of Justice approved the acquisition in August 2009, the EC announced in September 2009 that it was opening an investigation.
In its press release issued on September 3, 2009, the EC said that its “initial market investigation indicated that the proposed acquisition would raise serious doubts as to its compatibility with the Single Market because of competition concerns on the market for databases.”
Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes was quoted as saying: “The Commission has to examine very carefully the effects on competition in Europe when the world's leading proprietary database company proposes to take over the world's leading open source database company. In particular, the Commission has an obligation to ensure that customers would not face reduced choice or higher prices as a result of this takeover. Databases are a key element of company IT systems. In the current economic context, all companies are looking for cost-effective IT solutions, and systems based on open-source software are increasingly emerging as viable alternatives to proprietary solutions. The Commission has to ensure that such alternatives would continue to be available.”
As The New York Times reported on September 4, 2009: “A major concern cited by European investigators was what would happen to MySQL once Oracle took it over. They expressed concern that Oracle would have an incentive to stymie the development of MySQL as a way of improving the sales of its competing database products.”
Originally, the EC said it would take 90 working days, until January 19, 2010, to make a final decision. After Oracle asked for extra time to prepare its case, the date was extended to January 27, 2010.
Can We Work This Out?
Hoping to settle the matter before the January deadline, Commissioner Kroes reportedly met with Oracle president Safra Catz in Brussels on October 21, 2009. Lamenting the unproductive results of the meeting, EC spokesman Jonathan Todd in his briefing on that day was quoted by news agencies as saying: "Commissioner Kroes expressed her disappointment that Oracle had failed to produce, despite repeated requests, either hard evidence that there were no competition problems or, alternatively, proposals for a remedy to the competition problems identified by the Commission."
In an attempt to quell the fears surrounding the deal, Oracle in late October published a FAQ that outlined its plans for the assets acquired from Sun. About MySQL, Oracle said: “Oracle plans to spend more money developing MySQL than Sun does now. Oracle expects to continue to develop and provide the open source MySQL database after the transaction closes. Oracle plans to add MySQL to Oracle’s existing suite of database products, which already includes Berkeley DB, an open source database. Oracle also currently offers InnoDB, an open source transactional storage engine and the most important and popular transaction engine under MySQL. Oracle already distributes MySQL as part of our Enterprise Linux offering.”
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