This is the battle I have been waiting for (at least until November 15 when New England takes on Indy).
I must admit part of my lust is just for the sport of it… to see Ellison do what Ballmer should have done. But it’s deeper than that. The statement of objections reportedly filed by the EU Competition Commissioner against the Oracle (ORCL)/Sun (JAVA) merger pits the statism of the 50-year European Union (EU) attempt to nationalize industries and markets, including a score of failed attempts to spawn an EU information technology (IT) industry and various EU IT markets, against a future world order totally tilted to the western part of North America and the rest of the Pacific Rim in all things economic and political, not just IT.
I’d really like to dig deeper into it but I cannot find the actual statement of objections being raised by the EU. This makes it hard to comment but the paragraphs below summarize what Oracle says in rebuttal. I am clearly not going to be disappointed because Oracle’s bombast is as usual seriously misleading and yet cuts to the quick. For example:
"Oracle's acquisition of Sun is essential for competition in the high end server market, for revitalizing Sparc and Solaris… "
Well that’s clearly not true because Sun has been a nonentity in the server market for some time so there is no essential competition. I guess you could say it might be important to “revitalizing Sparc and Solaris……and for strengthening the Java development platform” but the IT market has already said it doesn’t care.
“The transaction does not threaten to reduce competition in the slightest, including in the database market."
This is apparently the heart of the matter and is true because no merger or acquisition reduces competition; bad products decrease competition. As usual, a bunch of European guys with an apparently bad database management product called Maria (forked out of MySQL but see paragraphy below)--unable to compete on a level playing field, the worldwide IT market--are trying to tilt the EU database software playing field in their favor.
“It is well understood by those knowledgeable about open source software that because MySQL is open source, it cannot be controlled by anyone. That is the whole point of open source."
This is a side issue, or at least it should be, but the statement is true. Apparently the EU marches on because of the EU losers who were not able to take over the world with their low-functionality EU database software. It’s the same meme as the loser Norwegians that screwed up Windows 7 because no one used their Opera browser.
“Oracle and MySQL are very different database products.
Well that’s not true. Why would these EU losers who are marketing Maria start this battle if it was a different product than Oracle's database software. The whiners know that it’s just that Maria is 30 years behind Oracle’s relational database research and development. In theory, Maria could catch up if the EU tilts the playing field enough.
“The U.S. Department of Justice carefully reviewed the proposed acquisition during the normal Hart-Scott-Rodino review and considered it again when the European Commission initiated a second phase review.
Well Larry, that's not a winning argument. Don't you know that nothing makes the EU feel more comfortable than telling them the American government thinks it’s OK. Look how well the EU is coming through in Afghanistan. I hope Ellison has already made the threat Ballmer should have:
"Approve this or Oracle is out of Europe. Who needs your dying statist economy anyways?"
-- Dennis Byron
Comments