The EU decision to grant unconditional approval to Oracle came after an investigation into whether the deal would end up being anti-competitive, given that it also includes MySQL, the most widely used, and best known, open-source database.
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In mid-December, Oracle made a number of commitments about the future of MySQL and these pledges appear to have been the factors that swung the EU round to thinking Oracle's way.
Apart from news about the future of MySQL - which became the focus of the whole deal after one of its co-founders, Monty Widenius, started a campaign to "save MySQL" - news of the direction which both OpenSolaris and Java will take under Ellison's ownership will be keenly awaited.
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 last year. In April 2009, Oracle acquired Sun.
The EU launched its investigation in September and initially had to reach a decision by January 19. However, sources indicated to iTWire last month that the last date for a decision had been pushed back to January 27 at Oracle's request.
Widenius has already forked the MySQL code into a project called MariaDB. Btian Aker has forked the MySQl into a lightweight database known as Drizzle.
