Sam Varghese
Wednesday, 06 January 2010 05:29
Opinion and Analysis
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Predicting is tough, especially when it is about the future, but one thing can be said with certainty: the future of MySQL will be known this month. Or even this week.
The open source database has become the focus of the acquisition of Sun Microsystems by Oracle; after eight months, the matter is still held up by the European Union's
investigation into whether it would end up being anti-competitive.
The EU advisory committee, consisting of representatives from national anti-trust authorities of the 27 member states, is set to meet soon, to offer its opinion about the MySQL question.
Michael "Monty" Widenius, one of the founders of MYSQL, continues to
campaign against MySQL being owned by Oracle.
There are some questions about the whole affair which have not gained much breathing space.
For instance, if one is inclined to believe that Oracle's possession of MySQL would be anti-competitive, it could only be because the two products cater to different markets - Oracle to the enterprise market, and MySQL to the online market.
If one combines the extent to which the two dominate the market, then, yes, there are certainly concerns about how dominant any entity would be if it controlled both databases.
And in this light Widenius' contention that competition authorities should be bothered because Oracle sees MySQL encroaching on its own marketspace is rather disingenuous.
Is Oracle keen on MySQL because of the market control? Or is it because Oracle sees MySQL as a means to possibly defeat Microsoft's ambitions in the database market, where its SQL Server product is used for similar purposes as MySQL?
The only person I've noticed who mentioned this is
Eben Moglen , a well-known legal figure in free software circles.
But anyone who knows anything about the history of the computer industry is aware of the intense animosity between Oracle supremo Larry Ellison and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates.
At the level at which these men operate, money isn't a consideration. Power is, rubbing one's competitor's face in the mud is, especially when there is past animosity.
Here is just one example of how much Ellison dislikes Microsoft.
