Oracle battle for Sun intensifies

Sam Varghese
Tuesday, 15 December 2009 06:48

Opinion and Analysis

As the battle to influence EU regulators over the issue of Oracle acquiring Sun Microsystems intensifies, evidence has come to light of Oracle approaching customers to discuss the matter.


The EU has launched an investigation into the acquisition as it believes that if Oracle controls MySQL than it would be too powerful in the database market.

MySQL is the most widely used open source database.

Oracle denies this and, after two days of hearings by the EU, appears to be confident that its case will prevail. The US Justice Department has already given the green light to the sale.

iTWire has obtained a letter dated November 23 sent to one big customer in Germany, a translation of which is given below:

Dear Mr. [customer last name removed],

Our business is very anxious to understand our important/valuable customers view/attitude towards SUN Acquisition.  We would be grateful to know your views on this transaction.

To this end Mr. Joakim Johansson, Director Corporate Development from our headquarters in Redwood Shores requests a short phone conversation of about 10-15 minutes.

We would be very happy if you could arrange for this telephone conversation to take place and would give us a few appointment times, preferably afternoons.

[name of account manager removed], Account Manager for [customer company name removed] will be happy to take over all further arrangements.

We look forward to your reply.

Thanking you and with best wishes

[Oracle sales director - name removed]

Monty Widenius, one of the three founders of MySQL, launched a bid a few days ago to mobilise opinion against the retention of MySQL by Oracle.

In that appeal, he also accused Oracle of contacting their big customers and asked them to write to the European Commission and require unconditional acceptance of the deal.

Oracle was contacted and the contents of the letter put to them, along with Widenius' accusation. The company has declined to comment.

In other developments, Oracle has made a number of commitments regarding the future of MySQL to ease the concerns that the EU has expressed over its acquisition of Sun.

MySQL was founded by Widenius, David Axmark and Allan Larsson in 1995. The company was sold to Sun in 2008 and Widenius joined Sun, only to leave in February this year. In April, Oracle acquired Sun.

The EU launched its investigation last month and initially had to reach a decision by January 19. However, sources say that the last date for a decision has now been pushed back to January 27 at Oracle's request.

However, a final decision in a matter of this nature is normally made well before the deadline but there are various formalities which have to be completed before the decision is announced.

Widenius has already forked the MySQL code into a project called MariaDB.