Sun Microsystems To Cut 3,000 Jobs As Oracle Deal Drags On

afgun writes with news that Sun will be shedding 3,000 jobs, roughly 10% of their workforce, as they continue to lose money while waiting for EC regulators to approve their acquisition by Oracle. "Oracle Chief Executive Officer Larry Ellison said Sept. 22 that Sun is losing about $100 million a month as the transaction is delayed by the EU probe." James Staten, an analyst with Forrester, said, "The longer a cloud of uncertainty hangs over Sun, that drives customers into delays of purchases or into the hands of competitors. This is a very trying time for Sun and Oracle as they wait for an answer." A spokesman for EU Competition Comissioner Neelie Kroes said today that she "expressed her disappointment that Oracle failed to produce, despite repeated requests, either hard evidence that there were no competition problems or a proposal for a remedy to the competition concerns identified by the commission," and that "a rapid solution lies in Oracle's hands."

Comments

Cloud Computing is Evil!!1!

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

"The longer a cloud of uncertainty hangs over Sun, that drives customers into delays of purchases or into the hands of competitors...

I just don't see why Sun needed to use the cloud for uncertainty. Companies have been doing this for years without the cloud. Now they can't control it!

Re:Cloud Computing is Evil!!1!

[biryokumaru]

Well, I think Sun's real problem comes from being lost behind the Cloud.

Re:Cloud Computing is Evil!!1!

[binarylarry]

and being eclipsed!

Re:Cloud Computing is Evil!!1!

[cayenne8]

Ok..just a quick question.

If both Sun and Oracle are US companies....why do they have to get permission from the EU for this purchase? I can see them having to answer to the US, but, why do they have to answer to any other company? I've certainly not heard of foreign companies having to get permission to merge from the US....?

Re:Cloud Computing is Evil!!1!

[binarylarry]

When you start a new company overseas, you usually don't just buy a building and send people over there.

Sun Microsystems GmbH and Oracle Ltd (or whatever they are) are european business units owned by Oracle Inc in the US. They're probably the ones who need regulatory approval.

Re:Cloud Computing is Evil!!1!

[Anonymous Coward]

It just goes to show us the adaptability of Linux. With any other OS they would be locked in but with Linux they can adapt to the cloud with the freedom it gives them

Re:Cloud Computing is Evil!!1!

[Anonymous Coward]

So rather than satisfy the queries of the EU, Oracle would rather whine and blame the EU for the razor gang they have every intention of letting loose on the Sun employees anyway.

Re:Cloud Computing is Evil!!1!

[Archfeld]

They may be US based corporate entities, but they want to operate freely in the EU, and they want to be traded on the European stock markets, then you need the blessings of the EU's economic ministry(ies). From the article it looks like the EU already expressed specific concerns and is waiting for Oracle response, but issues like this are never simple.

Re:Cloud Computing is Evil!!1!

[countach]

True, but if Oracle kept Sun's US assets, including all the IP and manufacturing, and simply sold a European sales company because of EU regulators, what would the regulators have actually achieved in terms of competition? Possibly, not a lot.

Since it is EU that is dragging

[WindBourne]

Hopefully, the bulk will come from there. My guess is that doing so would speed up the decision to an over night one.

Re:Since it is EU that is dragging

[Splab]

Why?

They aren't elected by locals losing their jobs, those probing the companies are appointed, and thus have no interest in rushing the decision.

Also a merger between the two companies will likely result in even more job cuts.

Re:Since it is EU that is dragging

[cbope]

To prevent a large monopoly from forming around a certain product, service or market? Seems like a good enough reason to me. Monopolies only benefit themselves (the companies that create them) and not consumers. In the EU, at least the government still cares about protecting the consumer. In the US, the companies run the show and the politicians.

Re:Since it is EU that is dragging

[elnyka]

To prevent a large monopoly from forming around a certain product, service or market? Seems like a good enough reason to me. Monopolies only benefit themselves (the companies that create them) and not consumers. In the EU, at least the government still cares about protecting the consumer. In the US, the companies run the show and the politicians.

The unfortunate situation in this case is that the probe is using a "guilty until proven innocent" approach of things, thus causing 3K people losing their jobs. Where is the actual, sufficiently reasonable evidence that this merger will result in a monopoly? What other industries will get affected by it? IBM? MS? Large DB software writers? Server manufacturers? MySQL? Who are these potential consumers that must be protected by this evil merge of doom?

This shredding of 3K employees, probably translate to 3K households being affected, in an already affected job market. These are also white collar or almost-white collar workers who, as consumers to other services, will have to cut their spending. And that trickles down to blue collar jobs (in particular in the service sector), possibly affecting several other thousand households (not to mention the impact on the local economies where the bulk of the job shredding take place.) In market economy whether is in either side of the Atlantic, the less that white collar employees spend in their local economies, the more that it affects those that are under a lower income bracket.

So much for protecting the consumer. I agree that monopolies must be stamped out, but this is ridiculous.

Re:Since it is EU that is dragging

[samschof]

Not quite. In the U.S. the primary concern of anti-trust review for mergers and acquisitions is if it benefits or harms the consumer. In the EU, the primary concern is if the merger adversely impacts competition in the market. The failed acquisition of Honeywell by GE was blocked by the EU after being approved by the U.S. The U.S. review stated that bundling of avionics and engines, with some oversight of aircraft leasing by GE would reduce costs for aircraft and, as such, would not harm the consumer. The EU ruled that the merger would provide GE an unfair advantage against European jet engine manufacturers and blocked it.

Re:Since it is EU that is dragging

[etymxris]

Also a merger between the two companies will likely result in even more job cuts.

Sun has no way of surviving on its own at this point. So Sun is either acquired, or everyone at Sun loses their jobs, ala SGI. By the time this regulatory investigation completes there will be few left to cut.

Re:Since it is EU that is dragging

[sjames]

Read TFA more carefully! What Sun ACTUALLY has said is that the cuts are already part of a 1 year plan. Their complaint is that by holding up the deal, the EU is delaying FURTHER CUTS that they can't make until they are sure there will be Oracle personnel to fill those roles.

That is, they really wish the EU would hurry up and OK the deal so they can fire more people faster.

Other than that, Sun's problems are related to the delays in the deal only by coincidence.

The EU has listed specific concerns and is perfectly happy to move the process forward as soon as Oracle addresses them. It has not done so. Yesterday, right here on /. we read one suggestion (spin off MySQL) that would certainly take care of it.

As for U.S. regulators, it's no surprise they've already OKed it. They'll crack the sound barrier getting the rubber stamp out if your market cap is big enough.

Re:Since it is EU that is dragging

[teh_commodore]

It's not the EU that is causing these job losses, it's Sun's piss-poor management that caused them to need to be bought out in the first place.

Re:Since it is EU that is dragging

[NotBornYesterday]

Sun and Oracle hardly have a monopoly on anything on their line cards.

Re:Since it is EU that is dragging

[mrjohnson]

Those jobs (and more) were already lost once they decided to sell.

Re:Since it is EU that is dragging

[elnyka]

Those jobs (and more) were already lost once they decided to sell.

Speculation. Could be true, could be false.

What we know is that EU is dragging its feet in letting an otherwise legitimate merger to occur. It is also a fact that Sun is bleeding as it's waiting for the merger to be approved.

Without knowing anything else, it is reasonable to assume that the continuous monetary bleeding caused by EU feet-dragging on an already economically hurt Sun is one of the main causes (if not the primary one) for jobs cut just announced.

You could argue that these jobs were already lost, and that might be true. Hell, it might be the simplest explanation. But simplest =/= correct or pausible. Considering the facts at hand at this moment, it provides a logically compelling picture of the financial harm that this situation is causing Sun.

Re:Since it is EU that is dragging

[elnyka]

It's not the EU that is causing these job losses, it's Sun's piss-poor management that caused them to need to be bought out in the first place.

Causation dude. Sun's piss-poor management caused them to be bought in the first place. EU's feet dragging is causing further financial harm on already screwed up company for no valid reason. Learn to separate your arguments dude.

Re:Since it is EU that is dragging

[RightSaidFred99]

Oh bullshit. There is no monopoly in the database market, there isn't even a duopoly. This whole thing is ridiculous and the US needs to take action. Fuck those EU bureaucrats.

Re:Since it is EU that is dragging

[EvilAlphonso]

Had Sun/Oracle filed on correct time, they would probably have received the green light months ago. Instead they waited until the merger was approved in America to file in Europe, and it seems that the commission didn't like the appearance of being strong-armed into agreeing to the merger.

It gets even funnier when you consider that the Commission and the other European institutions are very large Sun/Oracle customers... both hard/soft and service wise.

Re:Since it is EU that is dragging

[Nefarious Wheel]

It's not the EU that is causing these job losses, it's Sun's piss-poor management that caused them to need to be bought out in the first place.

This goes up to fundamental problems in their business model, I think.

Over the last decade or so I've noticed a common thread in the IT business - when businesses suddenly start saying they're re-orienting themselves around a "services" model, it draws only one picture:

(1) They no longer have a viable product to sell,

(2) They haven't invested sufficiently in R&D over the long haul to keep themselves technically relevant, and

(3) They've bought into a race-to-the-bottom, price-driven market, and have effectively given their margins away to companies living in countries with a better $Local_Currency:dollar ratio.

(I do not believe this applies to the FOSS model, because community driven projects have always been services oriented, not transitioning to that model - they work to a different beat.)

Sun's product set consists of a set of high end servers (acquired from Cray originally iirc, not internally developed), the "Java" brand and associated software test suite, a version of Unix that is very good but competing with a free product, and a lot of very nice and clever people who nonetheless are competing with equally good brains from overseas that have the advantage of a depressed local currency.

What's not to like about this model? Sun is obviously able to convert air to money, to have a cash flow at all.

Re:Since it is EU that is dragging

[ClosedSource]

"Monopolies only benefit themselves (the companies that create them) and not consumers"

Well, we can debate if the fruit of monopolies has benefited consumers:

Xerox:
Ethernet
Press->Interpress leading to Postcript at Adobe
Laser Printers
Graphical User Interface

AT&T:
C and C++
UNIX
Laser
Transistor

IBM:
FORTRAN
DES
Fractal Science
Magnetic Disks
DRAM

Re:Since it is EU that is dragging

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the key difference in my observation. The EU strives continually to tip the playing field in favor of local business, and against outside business. It has been my observation that the US is more even-handed in applying their more laissez-faire approach.

Re:Since it is EU that is dragging

[thanasakis]

They haven't invested sufficiently in R&D over the long haul to keep themselves technically relevant

As opposed to say, Dell? You're serious? This is Sun Microsystems for crying out loud. Not invested in R&D??? They routinelly used to invest a disproportionate percentage of their revenues in comparison to other companies. And they weren't technically relevant? Puh-lease.

Sun's product set consists of a set of high end servers

When was the last time you visited sun.com? 2001? Their low end line is relatively good and comparable to other similar vendors in terms of price.

Oracle didn't buy them just to fire them all and sell the building(s). Possibly some stupid stuff will be axed, but their long term technological strategy was and is sound. Maybe under Oracle's aegis they will be able to sort it out, hopefully.

Re:Since it is EU that is dragging

[teh_commodore]

Piss-poor management leads to being bought leads to this mess with the EU leads to job losses.

This is collapsible. Piss-poor management leads to ... job losses. If you take out the piss-poor management, none of the rest would have happened.

QED

Re:Since it is EU that is dragging

[shutdown -p now]

This whole thing is ridiculous and the US needs to take action.

Oh dear, what will U.S. do? Take off every F-22, for great justice?

Re:Since it is EU that is dragging

[Anonymous Coward]

Possibly some stupid stuff will be axed, but their long term technological strategy was and is sound.

I'm sorry, but I don't agree. As much as I like Sun, they don't offer any competitive products. If their long term strategy was sound, they wouldn't be in this position.

Serious question... what does Sun offer that isn't available using Linux on a cheap Dell?

Java is "neat", but it's free. Solaris is nice, but it's now open source (aka free). Their hardware is cool, but it's not cool enough to justify paying 2-4x the price of an equivalent Dell.

Then there's the stupid decisions they've made, like buying MySQL. It doesn't make any sense for a company (supposedly) focused on high end computing to buy a company that sells support for the lowest end database system. Telecoms, financial companies and giant government data-centers - the bread and butter of Sun's "big iron" customer base - aren't running MySQL, and they're not about to start. It's like Ferrari buying a company that sells cheesy aftermarket spoilers.

Then there's Star Office/OpenOffice. It's free. And it's a very bad piece of software. It's so bad that it actually makes Microsoft's Office suite look good - that's pretty fucking bad.

What else is there?

Re:Since it is EU that is dragging

[davecb]

Actually it's our favorite monopolist, who's been identified on Groklaw as one of the complainants.

And MS now employs Monty Widenius(sp?), and is making a push before the EC against the GPL: see http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20091021164738392

I see it as astroturfing the EU: dredging up simulated public support for a bogus problem to distract the commission from it's own bad behavior. With luck, they can distract the EC until the current head leaves, then make a deal for reduced penalties...

And, of course, get back at Sun for all the uncomplimentary things Scott's said about them!

Me? I want the deal to go through, in part because Sun and Oracle customers often hire capacity planners (;-))

And also because Microsoft doesn't deserve to get away with it.

--dave

Re:Since it is EU that is dragging

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, Xerox had a monopoly on computers, huh?

You've managed to completely ignore the fact that those companies had monopolies in a different market. Xerox had a monopoly on photocopiers, not computer networks and/or other hardware. AT&T had [has] a monopoly on telephones, not computer hardware. IBM had a monopoly on big iron, not programming languages or the other crap — and I would point out that FORTRAN was mainly to make their servers more attractive over competing/previous-generation machine language programming systems.

Find companies that continued to innovate after acquiring a monopoly in their target market, compare it to the list of companies that don't, see which is longer.

Re:Since it is EU that is dragging

[cerberusss]

Well, we can debate if the fruit of monopolies has benefited consumers: [list of inventions/achievements follows]

Have you ever stopped to think about how luck was a great part of how successful much of these inventions were? And how it might not have been caused by the inventor having a monopoly in a certain market?

So -- UNIX was invented at the right place, at the right time. Why? Because the whole world saw the need for a relatively easy to use multi-user, multi-tasking operating system.

Agreed, it's a totally hypothetical/academic question, but nevertheless I often ask myself: is there really a causal relationship here? Or do I just want to see one?

Re:Since it is EU that is dragging

[Anonymous Coward]

If you think that the US is more even handed in dealing with big business interests, then you're either smoking crack.

If you think that the US is less inclined to tip the field in favour of its corporations using political (and even military) muscle, then you must be a fucking moron.

Re:Since it is EU that is dragging

[LinuxAndLube]

MySQL's creator and the EU are concerned about the future of MySQL in Oracle's hands. It's amazing that somebody on ./ still manages to give this story an astroturfing twist.

I'm surprised to hear that MS employs Widenius. Can you back that up?

Re:Since it is EU that is dragging

[Anonymous Coward]

I do not see any monopoly with the acquisition. Take a look at http://www.informationweek.com/news/global-cio/interviews/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=220800002 For more insight on the matter. It seems to me the fight is over "Mysql" trademark. The sources are open and anybody could start fork like Maria DB

Re:Since it is EU that is dragging

[ClosedSource]

I think it's safe to say that if C and UNIX had not been created it's doubtful that languages and OS's filling the same needs would bear much of a resemblance to them. Both C and UNIX are pretty idiosyncratic.

I was answering the claim that monopolies haven't benefited anyone else and I showed evidence to the contrary. There's always luck involved in invention.

Re:Since it is EU that is dragging

[ClosedSource]

The inventors of a new technologies always have a monopoly at first by definition even if the market size is tiny.

The claim was that monopolies didn't benefit anyone else. I don't see any relevance to whether an invention by a monopoly is directly related to the core business or not.

I suspect the reason why these major monopolies were able to create so much was because they had money to burn due to their monopoly status. Smart companies do research to the extent they can afford it. You never know what you will discover or invent that might help your business.

Re:Since it is EU that is dragging

[davecb]

Sure: see the linked-to groklaw article, http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20091021164738392 I don't doubt they are legitimately concerned, but the discovery that MS is one of/the complainant suggests that there's more than legit concerns (;))

--dave

Re:Since it is EU that is dragging

[LinuxAndLube]

Widenius sits on the advisory board of the Codeplex Foundation, the non-profit sponsored by Microsoft: http://www.codeplex.org/board-of-directors.aspx

As far as I can tell, Monty is employed by his own company, Monty Program AB. I did not find any indication in the groklaw article that Monty is employed by Microsoft.

There is of course the link with MS. I suppose that, in the eyes of some, he's just as much a traitor as de Icaza.

Re:Since it is EU that is dragging

[LinuxAndLube]

This is a bit OT (as it has nothing to do with Monty), but I just read this:

Software freedom activist Richard Stallman and others are trying to block Oracle’s acquisition of MySQL. Why? Because MySQL is covered by the GNU Public License (GPL), and the purchase has exposed a flaw in the GPL that Stallman says will cause a “major setback” to the development of the free database if the acquisition is allowed to go through.

http://blogs.zdnet.com/Burnette/?p=1426&tag=content;col1

Will this impact the 'Yes' camp in any way?

mysql?

[Anonymous Coward]

So all the fuss is over mysql? which is free? How can there be a monoply on something free

Re:mysql?

[rs79]

Jamie Love was told by Oracle that they want to control the copyright to MySQL. My impression was if they don't get it it's a deal-breaker. It might even be the only reason they want it.

Re:mysql?

[notamisfit]

MySQL is dual-licensed, and IIRC the commercial side and it's support business are the holdup. Think of it this way: Linux may be free, but if Microsoft put in a bid to buy out Red Hat tomorrow, do you think the regulators wouldn't care?

Re:mysql?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh please. MySQL is the least valuable thing to Oracle that Sun has. Java and the hardware are what they want. The whole goal of this merger is to protect Java from IBM, as Oracle is heavily invested in it, and give them the ability to see hardware ala IBM. Oracle realizes that the real money in business software comes from the sale of services/maintenance and the ability to go to a customer and say "we can offer the whole package from storage to servers to software and we can do it better and faster than IBM." One just needs to look at the various speeches/keynotes from Oracle OpenWorld last week to see that.

Good news for Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple will be able to cherry pick the top engineers from Sun and continue its relentless assault on every other version of Unix (and suck unix-alikes like Linux). GO APPLE!

Re:Good news for Apple

[gr8_phk]

Apple will be able to cherry pick the top engineers from Sun and continue [...]

Yeah, because when a company is tight on cash and needs to shed some people, they always dump the "top engineers" first.

Re:Good news for Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

If you've already sold the company then yes you do. And offer them jobs at your new startup of course...

Re:Good news for Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, because when a company is tight on cash and needs to shed some people, they always dump the "top engineers" first.

Absolutely.

Engineers will make you money in the future, but sales & marketing make you money TODAY.

Re:Good news for Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple will be able to cherry pick the top engineers from Sun and continue its relentless assault on every other version of Unix (and suck unix-alikes like Linux). GO APPLE!

Go zealots! Save that economy!

Re:Good news for Apple

[etymxris]

Top engineers left for greener pastures years ago. Few people with highly valued talent are going to stay aboard a sinking ship.

Re:Good news for Apple

[TheRaven64]

Top engineers cost more. You can keep two incompetent engineers or keep one competent one. Do you want to announce 3,000 job cuts, or 6,000?

Re:Good news for Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean 1500 instead of 3000. Its been my experience that those at the top are the last to go. If anything, (and this happened when I worked at the DOT), everyone gets bumped down a notch, the person making 20k a year gets bumped out at the bottom and they cheer about how a 400k job got cut off the top.

Ironically, the word was Mourning

Re:Good news for Apple

[ducomputergeek]

The top engineers don't get dumped, they leave. If you have the choice between staying with a sinking ship, with uncertain job prospects after a merger, and say going to work for Apple, which has more job security and stability at the moment, what would you do?

Re:Good news for Apple

[Jason Earl]

Imagine you are a top engineer working for sun. I know it's a stretch, but try and hang with me here. Now imagine that you knew Sun was going to cut 3,000 jobs. You probably would, at the very least, spruce up your resume. You also might start actively looking for a new job. At the very least you'll probably actually answer the phone when the headhunter that has been bothering you calls again.

The problem with top engineers is that they generally have the skills and contacts that it takes to move fairly easily to a new job, but "fairly easily" still takes a bit of doing, and the more time you have beforehand, the better. So when things begin to get dicey at a company the best employees are often the very first to jump ship. After all, why go through the uncertainty of a round of layoffs if you don't have to?

In fact, right now only the very worst of Sun's employees are not actively looking for a new job. Only the folks that know that there is no way that they'll land a comparable job somewhere else are dedicating their resources to hanging onto what is clearly a sinking ship. Everyone else is moving towards the lifeboats.

Re:Good news for Apple

[petermgreen]

Afaict what tends to happen is that they start with early retirements, that means the oldest slice of your workforce, possiblly the most experianced too. OTOH they were people you would probablly lose in a few years time anyway due to normal retirement.

Then they tend to go for "voluntary redundancies", basically anyone who leaves gets paid extra for doing so. This means all your most employable people go find another job. Even if there is no payment for leaving people who can leave are likely to do so because they can get a more secure job elsewhere.

Only if both of those fail to cull enough people do they go for compulsary redundancies.

Re:Good news for Apple

[Macrat]

What kind of engineers do you think are left?

All the competent engineers left Sun already.

Re:Good news for Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

It's funny because it's true even if parent post has sarcastic undetone. Low level engineers or contractors and the top engineers are dumped first, together with middle management. The top management and middle level engineers will hang around longer. One because they are experienced and won't cost as much, the other because you can't easily fire them without risking the company collapse, even if their job is simply twiddling their thumbs. This arrangement is standard practice and also sadly logical.

Re:Good news for Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

Top engineers cost more. You can keep two incompetent engineers or keep one competent one. Do you want to announce 3,000 job cuts, or 6,000?

In the case of a publicly traded company, you absolutely would prefer to announce the largest number of job cuts possible. Surely you didn't mean to imply anything else, right?

Re:Good news for Apple

[WuphonsReach]

We called it "brightsizing" at UPS back in the mid-90s.

All your bright employable people head for the exits.

Re:Good news for Apple

[mikael]

The "top engineers" bail out quickly because they don't want to work in a project team where moral is low due to employment uncertainty.

Happens in every company - they'll either work for competitors or set up their own consultancy.

just a ploy....

[Anonymous Coward]

for oracle to drag the deal out and crush sun by letting it bleed money until worthless.

Nancy Kroes?

[anomnomnomymous]

Erm, she is called Neelie Kroes.

Re:Nancy Kroes?

[Chris Mattern]

Erm, she is called Neelie Kroes.

Man, I hated her on Star Trek:Voyager.

Re:Nancy Kroes?

[syousef]

Erm, she is called Neelie Kroes.

Nancy is Neelie's hotter evil twin sister.

Re:Nancy Kroes?

[dkf]

Erm, she is called Neelie Kroes.

Nancy is Neelie's hotter evil twin sister.

If you work for Opel in Germany (or sit on Magna's board) I don't think you'll be believing it is possible for someone like her to have an evil twin...

EU is to blame

[toxygen01]

Fuck EU. Dragging the deal because of OSS product. Stupid.

Re:EU is to blame

[V!NCENT]

I am a EU citizen and thus far I have been happy by what seemed to be common sence to me with the cases against Microsoft. However N. Kroes just seems to be absolutely fscking retarted instead of enlightened. Since when does a person or a company need to explain why it is doing good? I thought innocent untill proven guilty? What is this bullshit?!

Re:EU is to blame

[noundi]

Fuck EU.
Dragging the deal because of OSS product.
Stupid.

Haha, yeah! Fuck EU! Fuck America! Fuck the world! Let's be a bunch of angry teenagers and punch walls! I mean who in their right mind would cast doubt on the merger of the companies owning the two, by far, largest commercial OSS database products! And there is no chance in hell Sun/Oracle is using this as an excuse to lay off some unprofitable workforce! Fuck hormonal inbalance and puberty!
 
Kids...

Re:EU is to blame

[sjames]

I don't know the law in the EU, but in the U.S. supposedly all corporate charters are contingent on the corporation's existence being in the public interest. The government doesn't even seem to pay lip service to that here, but it is the law. Perhaps the law is the same in the EU but someone is actually upholding it?

Re:EU is to blame

[eln]

And there is no chance in hell Sun/Oracle is using this as an excuse to lay off some unprofitable workforce!

I think there's very little chance of that. Everyone knows massive layoffs are an inevitable consequence of most large-scale mergers, so no one is going to hammer Oracle too hard if they lay some people off when the merger is complete. Given that, they have little to gain by forcing Sun to lay people off right now. Also, there's no doubt that other companies, especially hardware manufacturers, are doing everything they can to exploit the uncertainty and poach Sun's customers. IBM and HP have both admitted as much. So, while the $100 million a month figure may or may not be exaggerated, Sun is definitely losing customers, and therefore revenue, at a very rapid pace these days because of this delay.

Also, until the Change in Control takes place, the companies are still required to operate as two separate entities. If it was discovered Oracle was exerting enough control over Sun to order them to shed employees, Oracle would be in a heap of trouble with regulators on both sides of the pond.

Re:EU is to blame

[interval1066]

1) The previous commenter is correct (making slashdot incorrect); the EU Commissioner in question is NEELIE KROES, not "Nancy Kroes".
2) Now why would the EU be interested in slowing down the progress of two AMERICAN companies in joining their efforts, hmmmm???

Re:EU is to blame

[noundi]

And there is no chance in hell Sun/Oracle is using this as an excuse to lay off some unprofitable workforce!

I think there's very little chance of that. Everyone knows massive layoffs are an inevitable consequence of most large-scale mergers, so no one is going to hammer Oracle too hard if they lay some people off when the merger is complete. Given that, they have little to gain by forcing Sun to lay people off right now. Also, there's no doubt that other companies, especially hardware manufacturers, are doing everything they can to exploit the uncertainty and poach Sun's customers. IBM and HP have both admitted as much. So, while the $100 million a month figure may or may not be exaggerated, Sun is definitely losing customers, and therefore revenue, at a very rapid pace these days because of this delay.

Also, until the Change in Control takes place, the companies are still required to operate as two separate entities. If it was discovered Oracle was exerting enough control over Sun to order them to shed employees, Oracle would be in a heap of trouble with regulators on both sides of the pond.

They are losing money by choice. Oracle is obviously not too keen to provide substantial data regarding the antitrust claims, and meanwhile Sun could have sold off MySQL months ago. Whatever seven years of famine will follow this merger will be caused by none other than Oracle and Sun themselves and the power to end this charade is solely in their hands. Don't listen to the media bullshit, these are proper businessmen we're talking about, they knew the consequences before they played their hand. You don't get to be executive in Sun or Oracle unless you have a good bit of business understanding, although most people would like to fantasize so inside their cubicles.

Re:EU is to blame

[ClosedSource]

As usual "common sense" depends on your point of view. So far the only thing that has happened in the Microsoft case was a big transfer of wealth from MS to the EC and forcing MS to create a new version of Windows nobody buys.

All this because of fear that MS might someday be a big player in the server market.

Re:EU is to blame

[V!NCENT]

If common sence was depending on personal point of view it wouldn't be called common, now would it?

FTFY

[AlXtreme]

EU Competition Comissioner Neelie Kroes

I must be missing something

[Just Some Guy]

I don't really get this. If you Oracle on Solaris is a good solution for you today, will it become a bad solution if the merger isn't approved?

Also, how do you produce "hard evidence that there were no competition problems"? Tell them you looked really hard but couldn't find any counterevidence?

I'm ambivalent about Sun and am definitely not an Oracle fan, but I don't really see the problems here.

Re:I must be missing something

[Timothy Brownawell]

Also, how do you produce "hard evidence that there were no competition problems"?

Point out the existence of Postgres?

Re:I must be missing something

[GameMaster]

If, by not merging, Sun goes out of business, then no more support for your newly purchased equipment. Of course, I don't have any idea how likely Sun is to go under, but that's what they're trying to allude to in pressuring the EU. As for counter evidence, just point to all the competing products/companies that will still exist in their markets after the merger.

Re:I must be missing something

[MightyMartian]

I've been using MySQL for about ten years, mainly because I've become pretty durned familiar with it. However, all these antics and all this uncertainty is making PostgreSQL look considerably more attractive. To be honest with you I'm feeling that way about a lot of Sun's products. The uncertainty is making me uneasy about Java as well, and I sure the hell wouldn't do anything in OpenSolaris right now.

Re:I must be missing something

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't depend on support from Oracle until the merger goes through, and Oracle can't really guarantee anything until the merger goes through.

I do agree with the sentiment though, and especially with the rest of the statement.

Re:I must be missing something

[MrMarket]

It's not about Solaris. It's about MySQL

Re:I must be missing something

[wsanders]

The problem is that the longer the decision is delayed the longer Sun's EU employees get to keep their jobs doing .... whatever it is they do.

I dunno what Sun people do anymore. Every time I've called Sun for the last 5 or 6 years they seemed only vaguely interested in selling me a computer.

Re:I must be missing something

[nicolas.kassis]

Why is it not about Java also? MySQL is big but Java is bigger.

Re:I must be missing something

[reashlin]

Because Oracle does not already own the biggest programming language in the world. This all revolves around the fact that Oracle are attempting to own two of the biggest (if not the biggest) Database solutions out there.

Re:I must be missing something

[gtall]

Wow, that's the first time I've seen Oracle used as a verb. You've been Oracled on must mean something like Larry has peed on your rose bushes (egads, not again). Solaris probably will get Oracled on.

Re:I must be missing something

[idontgno]

Because Oracle doesn't already offer a competing product in the same market space as Java, raising concerns about anticompetitive squashing or stifling of Java.

OTOH, MySQL runs the perceived risk of being the fifth wheel in the "Oracle RDBMS über alles" mindset that much of the community fears (wrongly or rightly).

On a slightly offtopic note: I wonder if this comment will preserve the umlaut-u I put into the quoted phrase there.

Re:I must be missing something

[catmistake]

and I sure the hell wouldn't do anything in OpenSolaris right now

Why the hell not?

Re:I must be missing something

[Life2Short]

What do these companies do with all of these employees? They had 30K and can cut 3K at the drop of a hat? Adobe has about 7K, Google 20K, Apple 32K, Microsoft 91K and IBM nearly 400K!! What do all of these people do? By way of comparison, Harvard has 13K and GM had about 245K. How many TPS reports do 10K employees generate?

Re:I must be missing something

[Anonymous Coward]

they manage them

Re:I must be missing something

[JumpDrive]

What the EU has been driving at is the assimilation of MySQL by Oracle.
Even as a Postgres user I'm willing to admit that MySQL is used in a much larger number of databases.
So the issue isn't that there is an alternative, it's that a significant number of people are using MySQL in production environments.
And believe it or not the EU considers that there is a serious amount of momentum for the end user if they are already using MySQL.
The concern they have is that MySQL would be abandoned by Oracle. Leaving a large number of people with concerns about what they are going to do for support.
If Oracle would spin MySQL or seperate MySQL from the deal, this thing would be over in a couple of days.
Currently what Oracle and Sun are saying is, if you don't let us have MySQL we are going to start laying people off and it's your fault.
. So now they are playing a game of chicken.
The only problem is that the EU usually takes into account these type of tactics and realizes that no matter what happens a large number of people are going to lose their jobs.
Here in the US congress would be crying about the job loss we were creating by not letting the deal go through.

I'm becoming a little more impressed with the EU's dealing with these types of issues. They seem to be a lot more business savvy compared to the counterparts in the US.

Re:I must be missing something

[Tanktalus]

Because Oracle doesn't have a competing VM, but does have a competing DB? (And even has a free DB that was a direct response to MySQL?)

Re:I must be missing something

[debrain]

Also, how do you produce "hard evidence that there were no competition problems"? Tell them you looked really hard but couldn't find any counterevidence?

Sir-
Cite existing studies, or alternatively commission a study by a market research / auditor like PWC or Deloitte of:

1. the market effects of the merger upon the same types of products and services that are offered by both companies, which study ought to (if the merger is to be approved) indicate that there is a limited impact upon the competition in all of the significant types of products and services where both these companies presently provide products and services in the marketplace; and

2. the ability for the merged company to exclude the products and services of other companies now that the two have merged, and the likelihood and market effects of that possibility of exclusion; which study ought to (again, if the merger is to be approved) indicate that there is a limited likelihood or impact upon competition because the company can now exclude other companies from its decisions.

The prior is to recognize and prevent the creation of horizontals (i.e. the single provider of a product or service, e.g. Microsoft-OS's) and verticals (i.e. the single provider of an entire product from start to finish, e.g. Monsanto-food).

The EU commission wants to know, I suspect, whether this merger will make Oracle the only provider of certain products and services (e.g. databases), or alternatively whether it will make Oracle a single solution provider at the expense of others (i.e. bundling the Oracle database with Solaris operating systems with Sparc servers so as to exclude PostgreSQL, Linux and Intel). In the prior case there are obviously other databases, PostgreSQL, etc., and in the latter there are clear reasons why the merger wouldn't hurt the OS or server market (namely there is vibrant competition in both with Solaris). That's just my opinion, though - I don't know the details.

Re:I must be missing something

[Anonymous Coward]

mysql the company... not mysql the opensource database project... (yes, mysql company puts a lot of code out there, and supports the product in production environments, but does not assert 100% control over the opensource project...

Re:I must be missing something

[GuyverDH]

Because Oracle doesn't already offer a competing product in the same market space as Java, raising concerns about anticompetitive squashing or stifling of Java.

Really? What about jRockit from the BEA purchase they made?

http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/jrockit/index.html

Re:I must be missing something

[Tragedy4u]

Become a contract consultant for their former employer for nearly double what they made as a salaried employee. ;)

Re:I must be missing something

[MrMarket]

Because the JAVA creator is not running interference as the ars article cites.

Re:I must be missing something

[Jason Earl]

Because, while OpenSolaris is pretty cool, support for OpenSolaris could easily disappear tomorrow. Yes, OpenSolaris might still exist, but future development on OpenSolaris is basically 100% dependent on Sun. If Oracle decides that it does not want to fund OpenSolaris development any more (or it simply decides to reduce funding for development) then OpenSolaris will be in serious trouble.

Re:I must be missing something

[RightSaidFred99]

Which is complete shit and they are certainly _not_ the two biggest database solutions out there.

Furthermore, there is a low barrier to entry and a shitload of alternatives: Databases.

This is just the EU bureaucrats exerting power for their own benefit. If those fuckers want a trade war, I say we give it to them.

Re:I must be missing something

[Anonymous Coward]

Where I work we could lose 1/2 our staff and nothing would be lost. And by their standards, we are "staff lean".

Re:I must be missing something

[Rudeboy777]

Yes, the problem is that the rank-and-file know exactly which half could be cut. Managers either don't know or refuse to cut employees they know to be loyal to them.

Re:I must be missing something

[FooAtWFU]

Maybe they don't do all that much. If you've looked at the latest Bureau of Labor Statistics figures for 2009 2Q, worker productivity increased 6.4% (annualized rate):

Over the long run, productivity is key to improved living standards by spurring rising output, employment, incomes and asset values. While the jump in productivity could suggest that the economy is poised for a strong recovery once it reaches bottom, that could be offset by the negative impact on consumer demand from job losses.

For the economy to recover, those people will end up having to find something else (productive) to do. This is not a trivial undertaking. But, in the long run, it's better then them idling away on more TPS reports.

(Also: IBM employees do a bunch of "solutions" custom-software stuff through IBM Global Services. Microsoft uses developers developers developers to brute-force things instead of doing real project management - or at least they did for Vista. The rest? your guess is as good as mine.)

Re:I must be missing something

[rbanffy]

I moved to PostgreSQL long ago. For me it was subqueries and transactions that made PostgreSQL look very attractive.

I would have no problem in doing stuff on OpenSolaris. Moving the kind of stuff I do to BSD, AIX, HP/UX, OSX or Linux is more or less trivial.

Re:I must be missing something

[Eil]

I have it on good authority that many of them post to Slashdot...

Re:I must be missing something

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't MySQL open source? Why is anyone concerned with abandonment?

Re:I must be missing something

[Macrat]

The problem is that the longer the decision is delayed the longer Sun's EU employees get to keep their jobs doing .... whatever it is they do.

Going to the movies. Going to the gym. Watching soaps. Surfing the web. Watching Hulu. Work?

Re:I must be missing something

[Macrat]

Takes a lot of head count to work on software and SPARC projects that never get released.

Re:I must be missing something

[notamisfit]

It's GPL/commercial licensed; the concern is over the former MYSQL AB.

Re:I must be missing something

[Stone316]

The great thing about opensource is that if people don't like the direction Oracle takes MySQL, then they can simply fork it. So pointing out MySQL's competition, or that fact should be enough. It sounds like MySQL is the remaining hurdle.. If so, its pretty safe to say that the European Commission has no idea what they are doing.

Ignoring what may happen to the employees, Oracles track record for acquisitions speaks for itself. Peoplesoft, JD Edwards, etc are all still around and have been steadily improved upon since they have been acquired. I don't see why there would be anything different here. I can see Oracle using MySQL to lure people away from SQLServer and when they outgrow that then upsell them to their flagship database.

I don't see any reason why SAP should be involved.. MS, sure, but they are more than welcome to fork MySQL and 'sell' it themselves.

Re:I must be missing something

[saleenS281]

If they go under, Oracle will just buy all of their IP for pennies on the dollar anyways. At this point about the only thing the EU is doing is trying to drain money out of Oracle to prop up SAP. As others have stated, were Oracle a European company, the review would've been signed off on in a week.

Re:I must be missing something

[Anonymous Coward]

OpenSolaris is the next generation of Solaris. Oracle has said, in statements that are essentially legal commitments at this point (in the sense that they are recorded as such by the SEC), that they will spend more on the development of Solaris than Sun is spending today (and Sun is clearly spending a significant amount today).

Although it is not a slam dunk, one would think that if Oracle is committed to Solaris, they are committed to there being a next generation of Solaris. If they're committed to a next generation of Solaris, they're committed to OpenSolaris.

So yeah: they could "simply decide to reduce funding for [OpenSolaris] development." They could also simply do the same thing for Oracle DB. And they could also simply decide to get out of the software business entirely and open a chain of sushi bars. But these three options seem to all share the same level of likelihood.

Re:I must be missing something

[TheLink]

I doubt Oracle would say stuff like "Our actual plan is to phase out OpenSolaris within the next 3 years" even if that was their plan. Customers would stop buying NOW.

Re:I must be missing something

[Anonymous Coward]

What about MONO? Java is also the compeditor to .Net (as far as I can tell, by what my teachers have said, etc)

So in effect Sun is competing with Microsoft (SuSe, MySQL, Mono, Java, Virtual Box)

If this crap falls it'll hurt a lot of people who depend on these "open" tools.

Re:I must be missing something

[lewiscr]

I've been using MySQL for about ten years, mainly because I've become pretty durned familiar with it. However, all these antics and all this uncertainty is making PostgreSQL look considerably more attractive.

I'd been using MySQL for about ten years, and that made PostgreSQL start to look more and more attractive. I finally jumped ship, and I'm glad I did.

Re:I must be missing something

[Anonymous Coward]

What do these companies do with all of these employees? They had 30K and can cut 3K at the drop of a hat? Adobe has about 7K, Google 20K, Apple 32K, Microsoft 91K and IBM nearly 400K!! What do all of these people do?

By way of comparison, Harvard has 13K and GM had about 245K. How many TPS reports do 10K employees generate?

I too would like that question answered. How do you let go of 10% of your workforce and maintain; Product Updates, Customer Service, Global Presence.

Unfortunately, I'm not really sure using examples like Harvard and GM are real world. When Harvard starts manufacturing a product at 20+ facilities let me know.

Re:I must be missing something

[Anonymous Coward]

OpenSolaris is the second biggest prize to Oracle behind Java. It's not going anywhere. Oracle has said time and time again that they want a full stack to compete with IBM.

Re:I must be missing something

[Anonymous Coward]

i am far more worried about Glashfish than MySQL or OpenSolaris. Sun finally got it together and bolted together a good app server and it is sure to be killed off in favor of Oracles offerings.

Re:I must be missing something

[NoOneInParticular]

Which is complete shit and they are certainly _not_ the two biggest database solutions out there.

Really? Care to name the two biggest database solutions that are not Oracle and MySQL? DB2/Postgres/Firebird aren't it, and the rest is not even on the radar...

Re:I must be missing something

[RightSaidFred99]

You're joking right? MS SQL Server. MySQL? Are you joking? MySQL is a tinker toy. But to round out the list, those other products _are_ "it", along with many others.

The lady's name is Neelie

[Anonymous Coward]

Not Nancy.

This is goat5ex

[Anonymous Coward]

Under the GPL. t4e reaper BSD's

Aren't these both US companies?

[gr8_phk]

Why does Europe get to hold up a purchase of an American company by an American company? Or is that not the case?

Re:Aren't these both US companies?

[Microlith]

They both operate in Europe as well. When you're a large, multinational corporation you generally have to accept regulatory practices of each nation you wish to operate in.

Re:Aren't these both US companies?

[GameMaster]

Because Sun and Oracle want to be able to sell their products in Europe. If they decided not to then, by all means, they can ignore the EU's authority.

Re:Aren't these both US companies?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you don't like the laws of the land, take your business elsewhere. Sun and Oracle are more than welcome to leave.

Re:Aren't these both US companies?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm wildly speculating here since I'm not a monopoly expert (or IANAME as you probably call it), but my best guess is that both companies may be selling some of their products on European markets (yep, they use markets for business stuff, too). Therefore they are both what I'd like to call "multinational companies". And since the EU is comprised of multiple nations, they probably have some prior art or somesuch in this case.

Re:Aren't these both US companies?

[Anonymous Coward]

Europe gets to define their laws... Oracle and Sun can merge as fast as they want if they do not want to do business in EU

Re:Aren't these both US companies?

[jittles]

I imagine it's because Oracle and Sun both want to continue to do business in Europe?

Re:Aren't these both US companies?

[jellomizer]

It is the EU job to keep down all those awful American Based Companies. If these companies had a strong European presence do you think they would be as hard on them. Probably not.

Re:Aren't these both US companies?

[elnyka]

Why does Europe get to hold up a purchase of an American company by an American company? Or is that not the case?

Ever heard of multinationals?

Re:Aren't these both US companies?

[Anonymous Coward]

I wish they would leave, and leave you Eurotrash pricks scrambling for... for... for what exactly I am at a loss to say. Someone tag this story "andnothingofvaluewaslost."

Re:Aren't these both US companies?

[elnyka]

If you don't like the laws of the land, take your business elsewhere. Sun and Oracle are more than welcome to leave.

And I'm sure every single European Sun/Oracle user who has invested millions in Sun/Oracle infrastructure will be more than happy to see them go (and sacrifice their investment) just to prove a rhetorical point of view.

In fact, this is not about not liking a law, but about having to face the consequences of a given interpretation and execution of a law where such interpretation and execution are of nature that is uneducated at best and ideologically malignant at worse.

I always thought that Europe would hold on to the enlightened principle of "innocent until proven guilty". Guess not.

I don't like monopolies either, but there is no logic or justification behind this particular case. Take ideology and sentiment out, observe the case (and the available evidence) objectively, and you will arrive to that conclusion... if you are a reasonable person capable of objective analysis.

Re:Aren't these both US companies?

[Anonymous Coward]

The EU is a nation now? ...pfft.

Re:Aren't these both US companies?

[Anonymous Coward]

What a load of bull crap. Every time I see that Calimero argument while some European companies are also under investigation or getting hefty fines with regards of anti competitive behavior... .

Re:Aren't these both US companies?

[josteos]

It's that kind of misunderstanding that led Bush to pronounce it 'Ewwww'.

Re:Aren't these both US companies?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why does Europe get to hold up a purchase of an American company by an American company? Or is that not the case?

Why? Because the US dollar is so worthless, and your country is run so badly, that the Eurocrats used their strong currency to purchase the USA in a leveraged buy-out financed by the Chinese. /ducks

Like other badly-run organizations, the USA is worth more as its constituent parts than as an integrated whole.

Re:Aren't these both US companies?

[pijokela]

If you read carefully, you'll notice that the parent didn't say that EU was a nation. The nations that make up EU will enforce any ruling made by the commission. So they do have to acce

Re:Aren't these both US companies?

[Tom]

Because they aren't "american companies". They are multinational corporations. They have offices and subsidaries in Europe and probably a dozen other places all around the world. Their HQs happen to be in the USA, but aside from that they're only "american" when appealing to patriotism serves their bottom line.

Re:Aren't these both US companies?

[Anonymous Coward]

They should leave, but not in the way you imply. They should pull out all manufacturing, development, etc.. sites in any EU country. Shut them down. Do whatever they need to placate the EU bureaucrats, but pull everything they can except maybe sales offices out of that shithole.

Re:Aren't these both US companies?

[Paul Jakma]

EMEA accounts for 1/3 of Suns' income. That's what for..

Re:Aren't these both US companies?

[Anonymous Coward]

If they left, they'd be suiciding.

Re:Aren't these both US companies?

[ioshhdflwuegfh]

Which part of:

In Europe, the focus is on whether Oracle will have the potential of building a dominant position in the enterprise-server market by acquiring MySQL. Oracle is the market leader in proprietary databases, while Sun's MySQL database product is the leading open-source database, the commission said.

you don't understand?

Re:Aren't these both US companies?

[metrix007]

Sure, I get that....but why can the EU affect a merger?

Since they are both US companies, sureley only the US has a say if they can merge or not? If the EU does not agree, they can prevent the new company from doing business there.

I get that that is not ideal for the company...but technically, why would the EU actually have any say?

Re:Aren't these both US companies?

[Anonymous Coward]

They are both American companies, it's just that the Europeans like to stick their noses into places where it doesn't belong just to see how long it takes for it to get chopped off again.

The arguments about MySQL ARE very VAPID. After all didn't one of the founders of MySQL leave to re-form another company using the MySQL codebase already? And as others have pointed out there is PostgeSQL which DOES have MANY more high end db features built right into it, and for even lighter weights(e.g. embedding) there are things like SQLlite as well as others.

Oracle dbs are just too heavy and cumbersome for alot of the applications that something like MySQL is used for, and I can't really see companies running out and replacing MySQL with Oracle. Hell for that matter in the higher end dbs there's already lots of competition from IBM & MS just to name two larger competitors, along with a multitude of smaller proprietary RDBMS. Hell, just go look at the various wikipedia pages about SQL dbs, the listing is fairly large for such a narrow market.

Re:Aren't these both US companies?

[Anonymous Coward]

The funny part is they could ignore it, and the EU companies would actually bulldog the EU commision into retro-actively approving the merger, since they would demand access to the company's products....

Re:Aren't these both US companies?

[NoOneInParticular]

You've answered your own question. If the EU dissaproves of the merger, OracleSun needs to close shop in Europe. That's obviously not acceptable for OracleSun, so they wait for approval before continuing the merger. A merged OracleSun that cannot do business in Europe is worth less than a single Oracle that can.

MySQL isn't nearly worth the losses Sun is taking

[etymxris]

I don't even know why Sun paid a billion for it in the first place. IIRC, most of the original people behind it have left and started their own companies around mysql open source forks, or gone to other projects. The supposed "ownership" Oracle will have seems mostly worthless. If they were rational they would have jettisoned MySQL at the first sign of EU resistance.

That said, I have little sympathy for the EU here. They're taking hundreds of millions of dollars out of Oracle/Sun's coffers due to the delays, then turning around and saying that the burden is on Oracle to prove it's innocence. If the EU is going to be so disruptive to businesses, they need to act quickly and with their own resources. I'm no fan of corporations, but the EU looks to be clearly in the wrong here.

OssSQL survey says!

[Anonymous Coward]

SELECT * FROM oracle WHERE competitor = 'mysql';

Empty set, 2 warnings (0.01 sec)

Re:OssSQL survey says!

[Monkeedude1212]

INSERT INTO oracle
(acquisitions)
SELECT employees
FROM competitors c
WHERE c.Company = 'mysql';

ALTER TABLE oracle RENAME COLUMN acquisitions TO interns;

Are you sure you would like to commit the following transactions?

Regulatory agencies run amok

[mysidia]

Does it do the public any good, if the regulatory agency kills the competitor being acquired, by delaying a decision?

By the time the acquisition is approved or rejected, Sun will be basically dead, and barely have any role as the competitor, anyways.

Re:Regulatory agencies run amok

[Anonymous Coward]

Out of curiousity, has Sun given any actual proof that their reasons for laying people off are actually because they're apparently in the red and not just because they're trying to apply pressure to the EU union by making the regulators look like "the bad guys"?

The counter evidence they have to provide is that they will still have competition after the merger isn't it? If so, show the regulators who your significant competitors will be. If you can't, either you're not looking (meaning Sun IS the cause of the delay) or there is none. (Meaning the merger should not be allowed to go through.)

Besides, do they have evidence that they're losing customers directly due to the hangup in the merger or are their marketing people just assuming? :P If a customer thought it was a risk to buy their stuff because they won't be around much longer, I don't see how the merger would change their opinion. Unless of course Sun is expecting to completely merge Oracle into it's existing workforce and lay off a lot of people that "duplicate" work. (Meaning these 30k people will probably lose their jobs anyway.)

Re:Regulatory agencies run amok

[vlm]

Sun will be basically dead, and barely have any role as the competitor, anyways.

So, if the situation is unchanged, whats the rush?

Re:Regulatory agencies run amok

[noundi]

Does it do the public any good, if the regulatory agency kills the competitor being acquired, by delaying a decision?

By the time the acquisition is approved or rejected, Sun will be basically dead, and barely have any role as the competitor, anyways.

Obviously if you read TFS Oracle is responsible for not providing substantial data. If this was truly a harmless move they would have stopped this fictional $100 million/month charade and sold off MySQL already. But they don't want to. Why? Because they want to own 100% of the OSS database enterprise market. So they get Sun to use the opportunity to fire 3000 people instead and say: "LOOK WHAT YOU MADE US DO!" With or without MySQL the merger will take place, they will fight until the bitter end, but either way those 3000 layoffs were probably planned months ago. You don't suddenly fire 3000 people, and anybody who think this is anything but months of planning and execution is naive and has never worked within management.

Re:Regulatory agencies run amok

[Anonymous Coward]

Does it do the public any good, if the regulatory agency kills the competitor being acquired, by delaying a decision?

By the time the acquisition is approved or rejected, Sun will be basically dead, and barely have any role as the competitor, anyways.

Well, now Neelie is such a good friend of Steve over at MS, I wonder if she cares too much about Sun taking a hit?

Re:Regulatory agencies run amok

[Tom]

Yes, it does good.

The entire philosophical underpinning of free market theory rests on certain assumptions. One of them being that neither a single supplier nor a single consumer has a commanding influence over the market. As soon as that happens, everything you learned about price finding, supply-and-demand, market equilibrium and all the other "magic" breaks down.

These are the people who guard the free market. They may not be perfect, but I'm damn happy we have them. Economics 101 tells you what happens in monopoly or oligopoly markets, and it's certainly not to the advantage of the public.

Re:Regulatory agencies run amok

[RightSaidFred99]

"OSS database enterprise market"? Are you kidding? So now we can just make obscure definitions for markets and then cry that they're being stomped by some big mean corporation?

I hereby protest the acquisition of LeisureCorp by DynaCorp. Dynacorp will be the only producer of green lawn furniture produced in a building that is energy efficient and which produces green lawn furniture with a nylon content of less than 25% and which offers MegaHealthCare insurance to its employees. This could be a market travesty!

Jesus Christ. The Database market (that's what it is, it's not an "OSS detabase enterprise market", jesus christ) is wide open and there are alternatives of every stripe up and down the market segment. These are simple facts.

Re:Regulatory agencies run amok

[RightSaidFred99]

They are not guarding the market. The market is fine. There are countless alternatives to both Oracle and MySQL.

Re:Regulatory agencies run amok

[mysidia]

Because they want to own 100% of the OSS database enterprise market.

So where are Oracle buyouts of PostgreSQL-related companies?

In case you were unaware, PostgreSQL, and some other OSS DBs are closer to OracleDB than MySQL.

And they are a significant proportion of the Enterprise OSS DB market. MySQL is by no means all the OSS market, it's only a decent sized chunk of it.

The rest is controlled by other SQL-based databases (such as HSQLDB, SQLite, PG, Firebird, SAPDB, Apache DB, Ingres, BlackRay, CSQL )

And the massive number of non-SQL RDBMS used in Enterprises. CouchDB, MonetDB, BDB, HBase, OpenQM, GNU GDBM, H2, GNOMEDB, GT.M, GladiusDB, C-Store, Hypertable

Mnesia, Perst, ZopeDB

There is basically 0% chance of Oracle owning 100% of the OSS Enterprise Database market, because there are so many databases needed.

MySQL certainly doesn't work for all enterprise applications.

Re:Regulatory agencies run amok

[mysidia]

What does free market tell you, when the same or approximately equivalent product is available for free from another source?

PostgreSQL is probably the best example, primarily because there is no GPL encumberance (otherwise, an OSS fork of MySQL would count, but developers of commercial applications that embed MySQL do need a commercial license).

Re:Regulatory agencies run amok

[Anonymous Coward]

Sun is cutting 10%. The EU will cut the other 90%. Problem solved.

You didn't really want Sun to be purchased by a *software* company anyway, did you? Heh.

Re:Regulatory agencies run amok

[noundi]

Namedropping will not make them corporate standard. The companies that I've worked within and their affiliates almost always use MySQL or Oracle, except a few Access and SQLite exceptions.

Re:Regulatory agencies run amok

[mysidia]

Anecdote dropping won't make MySQL or Oracle the corporate standard either. They are popular in some places, and certain types of apps, but far from 'standard'.

I see more developers in enterprises building applications that run against Microsoft SQL Server than OracleDB.

The fact of the matter is there aren't large-scale open source CRM, HR, accounting, and other products that are suitable for meeting large enterprises needs.

Almost always Enterprises buy in closed source apps. Typically the apps use SAPDB, IBM DB2, MS SQL, or Oracle.

Very few enterprise apps, in fact support open source DBMs.

However, I can think of some examples off hand: OpenNMS, which is a network infrastructure monitoring app designed specifically for enterprises, is widely used, and even won SourceForge community choice award in 2008, for the category of Enterprise Applications.

And guess what, it supports only PostgreSQL.

Oh yeah... and Firebird SQL won in the category of Enterprise Apps in 2009.

Strange that MySQL wasn't even nominated (eh?)

I am not suggesting MySQL is not popular. Only that "MySQL + Oracle" is not 100% of the market, and it's not even close to 100%.

Re:Regulatory agencies run amok

[Anonymous Coward]

Because they want to own 100% of the OSS database enterprise market.

So, you're saying that Oracle now owns SQLite and Postgres as well?
MySQL is insignificant. If that's the acquisition they need to prove isn't anti-competitive, all they need to do is point out that PostgreSQL still exists. SQLite still exists. DB2 is still owned by IBM, Microsoft still sells SQL Server.

Who gets to control Java is a much more pressing matter, given that the entire industry depends on it (save for the Microsoft shops), and what happens to the playing field when Oracle owns the complete stack top to bottom (Hardware, operating system, platform/framework, middleware, and the database).

But no, you're absolutely right. None of that is important, it's all about MySQL and owning the OSS database market (because Postgres magically disappeared, ZOMG).

Re:Regulatory agencies run amok

[Tom]

A DB is never free. A large part of Oracle's income isn't from software licensing, but from support contracts. Does that solve your problem?

Re:MySQL isn't nearly worth the losses Sun is taki

[Malc]

Surely this was rather predictable. Oracle need better lawyers who would have advised them. Where was their planning?

Re:MySQL isn't nearly worth the losses Sun is taki

[Anonymous Coward]

Oracle and Sun obviously engaged in some sort of discussions where they agreed to buy Sun if Sun would by MySQL. That way, Oracle could acquire MySQL with less of a concern, because while some people will (and have) focused on the potential unfair business practices the acquisition would pose, Oracle can say "sure, we're interested in MySQL, but we're more interested in all this OTHER stuff which is why we really bought Sun".

In other words, Sun execs want to cash out and get rich at the expensive of what was once a great company. Oracle wants MySQL. Oracle backroom deals with Sun to purchase MySQL, deflecting the incredible concern that there would be with a direct MySQL sale to Oracle. Then Oracle promises to gobble them all up six months later. Jonothan shakes on it and heads back home in his chauffeured limousine to issue an edict to the HR department to layoff ten thousand employees so he can keep things afloat while he rolls in his Oracle cash.

Did the US regulators have the same concerns?

[Lemming Mark]

Did the US regulators have similar concerns? If not, why not? If they're genuine concerns - they sound like it - why is it just the EU that's following them up?

There generally seems to be a certain amount of frustration that the EU is holding up companies of US origin, although actually they have significant financial impact (and offices and presumably regional headquarters and subsidiary companies) in Europe too. Presumably Oracle and Sun *themselves* could have predicted these hurdles if they'd done their homework - is it really that outlandish to expect that merging two leading (albeit in different markets!) database companies would be a worry for the regulators?

Presumably Oracle and Sun would be welcome to merge if they had terminated their entire presence in Europe - they're not proposing doing that and one assumes it's because Europe is a big enough financial interest for them that they believe it's *worth the wait*. They may not have a choice, in practical terms, but one assumes they have years / decades of making money from their European dealings so it's not like the EU is just a plain dead weight for them.

This is the same EU that is cracking down on anticompetitive behaviour from MS and Intel, which generally seem to be popular moves with folks here. Would the tech industry really be in a better position if they reduced their scrutiny? Or if they applied it only to certain companies.

To me it seems a bit "convenient" that, in an economy where many jobs have to be lost anyhow (and as a merger is occurring, which may also naturally lead to job losses) people are blaming job losses solely on the regulators doing their jobs and not on sharp practice, opportunism or plain lack of co-operation from large multinationals operating in a cutthroat market.

Re:Did the US regulators have the same concerns?

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe that US regulators looked at it, noted all the other databases available (including from some company in Redmond), and decided it wasn't a problem.

Re:Did the US regulators have the same concerns?

[KlaasVaak]

Did the US regulators have similar concerns? If not, why not? .

Because they have a different philosophy than the EU. The EU has been the leading anti-trust regulator in the world for a long time now simply because they believe it's in societies best interest to force companies to compete whereas the US believes more in the innovative power of unregulated companies and thus have a more laissez-faire attitude.

Re:Did the US regulators have the same concerns?

[RogerWilco]

Did the US regulators have similar concerns? If not, why not? If they're genuine concerns - they sound like it - why is it just the EU that's following them up?

There generally seems to be a certain amount of frustration that the EU is holding up companies of US origin, although actually they have significant financial impact (and offices and presumably regional headquarters and subsidiary companies) in Europe too. Presumably Oracle and Sun *themselves* could have predicted these hurdles if they'd done their homework - is it really that outlandish to expect that merging two leading (albeit in different markets!) database companies would be a worry for the regulators?

I was wondering this too. What I've seen so far of Neelie Kroes in the last couple of years, she's been very fair, and quick to act if she could. It's only when companies are dragging their feet and fail to reply to the raised concerns that get raised. And she might have given some big fines to US companies, the biggest and most fines have still been applied against EU companies.

And given that Oracle is acquiring MySQL with this merger, I think the EU certainly has a point, the only other sizeable players remaining are PosGreSQL and Microsoft. Basically you end up with a market that looks similar to the OS market with Linux and OSX as competitors to Windows, and for the OS market I think Windows has been ruled a (near) monopoly on both sides of the Atlantic. I think the EU is well within its rights if it wants to prevent the situation that the current OS market is in.

Re:Did the US regulators have the same concerns?

[Anonymous Coward]

And again, let's just play the blame game. You have to lay off about 10% of your workforce, which is really not a popular move at all. Would you rather:

a) Divert attention from your own game of poker and blame the stubborn, evil regulators instead? Due diligence anyone?
b) Go into the details of your less-than-ideal-management which made you need a strong partner in the first place?

Re:Did the US regulators have the same concerns?

[mcgrew]

Did the US regulators have similar concerns? If not, why not?

Because apparently, our government is beholden to business and business only and is corrupt as hell as well, and Europe's governments aren't?

To me it seems a bit "convenient" that, in an economy where many jobs have to be lost anyhow (and as a merger is occurring, which may also naturally lead to job losses) people are blaming job losses solely on the regulators doing their jobs and not on sharp practice, opportunism or plain lack of co-operation from large multinationals operating in a cutthroat market.

Amen to that.

Re:Did the US regulators have the same concerns?

[mr_death]

The EU regulators are dragging their feet -- any idiot can look around and note the significant market share of IBM's DB2 and Microsoft's SQL Server and come to the simple conclusion that competition does exist in the database market.

Re:Did the US regulators have the same concerns?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because apparently, our government is beholden to business and business only and is corrupt as hell as well, and Europe's governments aren't?

Right. That's the only explanation.

Mine is that they are socialist cocksuckers. There is no conceivable way this could create any kind of monopoly or even duopoly. The EU's "power to the people" bullshit will be it's undoing.

Have fun watching your population growth dwindle, swarms of poor people immigrating, and your societies collapse under the weight of your socialist policies you cocksuckers. I'll enjoy watching you fuckers riot, you do it at the drop of a hat.

Re:Did the US regulators have the same concerns?

[rsborg]

The EU has been the leading anti-trust regulator in the world for a long time now simply because they believe it's in societies best interest to force companies to compete whereas the US believes more in the innovative power of unregulated companies and thus have a more laissez-faire attitude.

It seems more and more that the US has become completely controlled by big business who are in turn owned by the elites (the top 1% who own more than 50% of everything).

(Economic) Freedom isn't Free. So tell me who believes more in Capitalism, the (so-called socialist) EU or the US?

Re:Did the US regulators have the same concerns?

[TheSync]

Did the US regulators have similar concerns? If not, why not? If they're genuine concerns - they sound like it - why is it just the EU that's following them up?

Gee, I don't know why the EU is dragging its feet, maybe because SAP is based in Germany?

Re:Did the US regulators have the same concerns?

[DragonWriter]

And given that Oracle is acquiring MySQL with this merger, I think the EU certainly has a point, the only other sizeable players remaining are PosGreSQL and Microsoft.

First, its PostgreSQL, not "PosGreSQL". Second, you left out, at least, IBM of the significant DB vendors.

Second, except as a ploy to give up marketshare to its existing competitors, I don't see the value proposition to Oracle of buying and killing MySQL. Heck, even just buying MySQL and putting it into permanent maintenance, rather than killing it outright, would seem to be an expensive way for Oracle to promote other third-party open-source DB server products, including the various MySQL forks, PostgreSQL, Firebird, etc.

Re:Did the US regulators have the same concerns?

[Zontar The Mindless]

And given that Oracle is acquiring MySQL with this merger...

Maybe not -- at least, according to this report from the BBC, Oracle are now saying that they'll sell MySQL to gain approval.

I think this story possibly contains a typo.

But -- as of right now ("last updated 21:27 GMT, Wednesday, 21 October 2009"), the next-to-last paragraph of the BBC article says (copy/paste, emphasis added),

Oracle maintains that there would be no conflict of interest and has promised to sell off MySQL to get the deal approved.

If true, this comes as quite a surprise.

Re:Did the US regulators have the same concerns?

[saleenS281]

MySQL isn't leading, that's the thing. Oracle isn't just making things up. In the "real world", MySQL doesn't even hit most companies radar. In all of my customers, not a single one runs MySQL for a production database. It's Oracle, MSSQL, or DB2. MySQL's financial numbers back up the fact their market penetration in the paying enterprise is NOTHING.

Re:Did the US regulators have the same concerns?

[Ash-Fox]

So tell me who believes more in Capitalism, the (so-called socialist) EU or the US?

With regards to "belief", the US.

Shame you didn't ask about the reality.

The real problem

[Anonymous Coward]

a woman making technology decisions......

The US regulators had other concerns . . .

[PolygamousRanchKid]

Did the US regulators have similar concerns? If not, why not?

. . . like GM, Chrysler, Wall Street, Savings & Loans . . . etc. All looking for government bailouts.

Oracle's Ellison was willing to bankroll the rescue of Sun with his own money.

With so many other headaches on their plate, the government was probably just happy to see a solution for Sun that didn't require gobs of taxpayer money.

the news now consists of all form of FUDgePacking

[Anonymous Coward]

as opposed to acknowledging stuff that really matters. the corepirate nazis are going DOWn the (you?)tubes anyhow, so flashing their phony #'s about is just more bad theater. robbIE has deleted most of our posts today. what a surprise.

we're thinking he chipped in on this program,
yro /. censorship (Score:mynuts won, the 'king' is still a fink?)
by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 21, @09:36AM (#29822581)

robbIE deleted a post with this reference moments ago. what a cad.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/10/21/new.york.subway.ads/index.html
FUDge on bobert.

Re:MySQL isn't nearly worth the losses Sun is taki

[reashlin]

Quick someone buy this man a tinfoil hat

Ellison

[TopSpin]

Larry doesn't mind; the EU delay gives him a scapegoat for the layoffs.

Those of you fixated on MySQL: Sun sells hardware, software licenses and contract support to enterprises that use SQL Server, DB2, SAP and other direct competitors of Oracle, meaning the some DB2 users (for instance) will find themselves relying on Oracle for support of certified DB2 platforms... MySQL may be the least of whatever "competition problems" the EU has in mind

Re:Ellison

[quantum bit]

Also, high end Oracle databases typically run on either Linux for distributed (cheap) clusters, or HP-UX/Solaris on high end hardware for big monolithic installations. Oracle already has their own Linux distribution that they push pretty hard, and once they buy Sun they'll own a major commercial UNIX player, too.

Oracle has traditionally been buddy buddy with HP, but since the announcement of the Sun deal, they've started giving them the cold shoulder. While I doubt they'd drop HP-UX support entirely (there would be outrage), I can certainly see them doing things to try to push people onto Solaris or Oracle Linux, on Sun hardware, and wrapping everything up as a neat package deal.

Re:Ellison

[marcosdumay]

That is a good reason for them to merge. Getting hold of Java may be another one (altough a business case for Java other than destroying Microsoft seems quite hard to find). Now, if those were so important, Oracle would have already let MySQL go. They are quite interested on owning a big competitor.

Re:Ellison

[DragonWriter]

They are quite interested on owning a big competitor.

They are quite interested in owning the dominant player in a segment of the market where Oracle doesn't have products with significant penetration.

That's not exactly the same thing as a "a big competitor".

Re:Ellison

[Anonymous Coward]

Since IBM sells/owns DB2, I bet they are willing to "help" in these situations.

Re:MySQL isn't nearly worth the losses Sun is taki

[gclef]

That said, I have little sympathy for the EU here. They're taking hundreds of millions of dollars out of Oracle/Sun's coffers due to the delays

Oh, nonsense. An organization the size of Oracle had to know that a merger like this would attract regulatory scrutiny. Every single news story about this has brought up that regulators would be looking at this one carefully. This shouldn't be a surprise that it's getting attention. Also, anyone who's paid attention to the Microsoft battles with the EU should have been aware they the EU competition regulators are much stricter than the US regulators.

Basically, for Oracle to pull this deal, they had a responsibility (I'll even go so far as to call it a fiduciary duty, since it's apparently costing them lots of money) to be ready for this scrutiny. This story seems to indicate that they weren't.

Re:MySQL isn't nearly worth the losses Sun is taki

[IGnatius T Foobar]

If they were rational they would have jettisoned MySQL at the first sign of EU resistance.

But they aren't Rational. Rational is owned by IBM.

Re:MySQL isn't nearly worth the losses Sun is taki

[Anonymous Coward]

They'd probably go a long way toward making the Europeans happy if they'd spin MySQL off as an independent organization. Ellison needs to decide which he wants more--the ability to kill off a competing database (and let's face it, that has to have been the intent) or to be in control of where Java goes from here. The latter would seem to be the bigger plum.

Re:MySQL isn't nearly worth the losses Sun is taki

[PietjeJantje]

The fact that you have little sympathy for the EU here, without any stated reasons - it is coming from the guts, is exactly why Larry managed to use this nonsense to hide their own evil reasons for the layoffs, by using people who bend forwards and follow up on the nonsense. Stop being Larry's instrument. You look clearly wrong here. And hey, I provided actual argumentation, unlike you.

Re:MySQL isn't nearly worth the losses Sun is taki

[TheRealMindChild]

MySQL is just a front end to a back end storage system. Perhaps the goal is to start peddling a commercial MySQL installation, compatible with current MySQL installations, but has an Oracle DB backend for more enterprisey features!

Not guilty until proven?

[Carra]

Oracle failed to produce, despite repeated requests, either hard evidence that there were no competition problems

I thought the accusers have to come up with the evidence in a court case?

Re:Not guilty until proven?

[edmudama]

That, and I'm not sure how you produce hard evidence that something as vague as "competition problems" do not exist.

Re:Not guilty until proven?

[lordandmaker]

I think they're referring to the 'competition concerns identified by the commission' from the end of the quote. That is, the commission has told Oracle where it feels there are problems, and would either like some proof that there are no problems, or a plan to solve them.

Regulators...

[Savage-Rabbit]

Presumably Oracle and Sun *themselves* could have predicted these hurdles if they'd done their homework - is it really that outlandish to expect that merging two leading (albeit in different markets!) database companies would be a worry for the regulators? ........ Would the tech industry really be in a better position if they reduced their scrutiny? Or if they applied it only to certain companies. ...... To me it seems a bit "convenient" that, in an economy where many jobs have to be lost anyhow (and as a merger is occurring, which may also naturally lead to job losses) people are blaming job losses solely on the regulators doing their jobs and not on sharp practice, opportunism or plain lack of co-operation from large multinationals operating in a cutthroat market.

Yup... it brings back memories from the recent past when all kinds of people were whining, pissing and moaning about how evil regulators stood in the way of Wall Street in it's quest to make the world a better and wealthier place with innovative financial products and free market fundamentalist dogma. In the middle of this stirring chorus of people chanting "deregulation" in perfect harmony.... BAM.... alluvasudden we had our selves a global banking crash. Now those same people are asking: "where were the regulators?" It just goes to show that humans are funny critters with short and selective memories. IMHO Oracle is getting to be every bit as much of a problem due to their size and market dominance as Microsoft is and you could add quite a few other companies to this list of corporations that are getting way too big in various different tech markets (Apple, Google... the list goes on) without hearing any objections from me.

Re:MySQL isn't nearly worth the losses Sun is taki

[Znork]

If they were rational they would have jettisoned MySQL at the first sign of EU resistance.

The fact that Oracle didn't do exactly that is really the strongest indication that Oracle really did have some anticompetitive intent with the acquisition. I can't really see what (nefarious schemes to kill it off would most likely be unsuccessful, as would locking it in, etc), but then I could never really see what Oracle could get out of the acquisition.

They're taking hundreds of millions of dollars out of Oracle/Sun's coffers

Would Sun magically stop bleeding if the merger completed? Maybe if Ellison went 'k thanks oh btw you're all fired' on the first day. But really, in the short term I don't see the schedule of the merger really affecting the scale of the losses. The uncertainty of Suns customers wouldn't be ameliorated by having Oracle finalized as an owner, so pretty much the only thing that'd change would perhaps be the interest rate on some loans.

It simply isn't the EU that's causing the losses and they'd be there either way.

Re:MySQL isn't nearly worth the losses Sun is taki

[Anonymous Coward]

Kind of.

The problem is, loosing hundreds of millions of dollars is worth it, if there is a chance they can get control over MySQL. MySQL's existence easily takes away more than that from Oracle's annual profit. So by not letting go of MySQL, they actually are handling their fiduciary duty quite well.

Re:MySQL isn't nearly worth the losses Sun is taki

[etymxris]

In case it wasn't clear enough for you, here are my reasons:

1) EU places the burden on Oracle to prove that the deal will not harm competition. That's not just.
2) Oracle has no real control over MySQL anyway.
3) Sun is quickly withering into a worthless husk of its former self the longer this deal is delayed.

Let me try to reconstruct your argument:
1') I don't state any reasons for disliking the EU.
2') Oracle is laying off these workers due to (unstated) evil reasons.
3') Oracle is using people like me who "bend forwards" to mask the evil reasons behind these layoffs.

I'm not sure what you're conclusion is supposed to be, but regardless, it's a horrible argument. (1') is clearly false as my reasons have been elucidated. (2') doesn't even make sense since Oracle doesn't even have control of Sun yet. I'm not sure what the evil reasons are supposed to be, but regardless, a lot more people are going to lose their jobs the longer this drags on. (3') isn't true in the slightest. I have no love of Oracle and would never recommend their products to anyone. I am not particularly happy to see Sun buy Oracle but I'm even sadder to see a somewhat open source friendly company like Sun wither away due to the delays of the EU regulators.

Re:MySQL isn't nearly worth the losses Sun is taki

[demachina]

People use MySQL because its free, simple and easy. If they wanted an expensive Oracle DB they would be using..... Oracle.

There is a near certainty Oracle is looking to mess with MySQL one way another or they would have spun it out of this deal already and it kinds of looks like the EU knows it. Oracle can't exactly kill MySQL since its open source but they sure can mess with it in to the future and force a migration to a fork and a new brand name which is usually messy. I doubt Ellison has any love loss for MySQL considering A) he is ruthless and B) MySQL and other open source DB's have cost him billions over the years.

Re:MySQL isn't nearly worth the losses Sun is taki

[smartr]

I don't see how the EU dragging its feet one way or the other is helping anybody but Sun's competitors. I suppose the theory is "competition" will be promoted by poisoning a weak competitor. There's no "yes/no/x stipulations", there's just feet dragging.

Re:MySQL isn't nearly worth the losses Sun is taki

[demachina]

Exactly right. Chances are Ellison is loving this since he can blame the carnage on the EU, he gets SUN to take all the charges for the layoffs, and he gets rid of people he would have fired the day after the merger closed anyway. Only interesting question is if Schwartz and SUN decided who got canned or if Ellison and Oracle are deciding. Chance are SUN at least consulted with Oracle on who got the ax.

Re:FTFY?

[Anonymous Coward]

FTF Yerpean Union?

not enough?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't understand the math. Even if each of those jobs paid $2000/wk (unlikely), that's only a savings of $6M/wk. That won't make enough of a dent if they're losing $100M/month.

wait a minute...

[toby]

There *are* US regulators??

EU System(s) of Law

[andersh]

The US is a Common Law country, for the most part, and almost all European countries use Civil Law/Roman Law [with the exception of England, Wales, Ireland and Northern Ireland, but not Scotland]. The systems are very different in all aspects. From the power of judges to the nature of precedents.

The EU is very active with regards to competition law due to the nature of the institution. The European Union is NOT a federal government, and each member country is still a sovereign country.

The EU and associated institutions legislate, monitor and adjudicate only on matters that are of importance to the whole community. Trade is centrally regulated with the goal of creating one large market for products, services and employees/employers. These are implemented locally within in each national system of law.

However due to the fact that each country may have different or other sets of laws and regulations related to products, take food safety as an example, if these laws stop/hinder products from other EU countries they may be in conflict with central EU treaties. Each country is looking to protect its own industries and jobs while at the same time hoping to win in other markets.

So because each member country is always looking for an advantage, they all work to make sure they are not getting treated unfairly. The result is an army of watchers intent on keeping the playing field *exactly* equal for all regardless of origin.

-----

Branches of American companies in Europe are not treated any different than European companies, the EU and it's member states don't care about the origins of a company - only the jobs, taxes and advances it makes possible in *their* country. That's why it's extra amusing to see angry Americans crying over the treatment so called "American" companies get in Europe.

you need to ask?

[toby]

why is it just the EU that's following them up? Because the US govt is just a branch of the corporates.

Re:MySQL isn't nearly worth the losses Sun is taki

[TheRaven64]

More to the point, provide a migration path. Once you've got that Oracle license, why not migrate all of your MySQL apps over to using it? Oh, they all use weird MySQL extensions? Never mind, you just need the new MySQL personality for Oracle which emulates all of MySQL's 'features' (even the data loss!) and lets you consolidate everything onto a single Oracle appliance.

No, they're not, they're global

[Anonymous Coward]

You are a very, very stupid person. Do you even know how much of Oracle and Sun's revenue comes from Europe? Or how many thousands of people work for them in Europe?!

They're VERY happy to make a lot of their money in Europe, and if they want to continue they have to follow local laws!

The same applies to large European companies doing business in the US! Recent examples include the Nokia's purchase of Nortel.

Re:MySQL isn't nearly worth the losses Sun is taki

[pnuema]

I don't suppose it has anything to do with Oracle owning Peoplesoft, which competes directly with SAP (a European company)?

Re:MySQL isn't nearly worth the losses Sun is taki

[Anonymous Coward]

They also cant make a clear case. Clearcase is also owned by IBM

Re:MySQL isn't nearly worth the losses Sun is taki

[Anonymous Coward]

funny :)

Re:MySQL isn't nearly worth the losses Sun is taki

[Anonymous Coward]

They could be dragging it out to help Oracle's competitor SAP, which is based in the EU country Germany.

Re:MySQL isn't nearly worth the losses Sun is taki

[rbanffy]

"I don't even know why Sun paid a billion for it in the first place"

That's it. Fire the 3000 employees closer to whoever made this stupid decision.

Their marketing team should go too.

That's easy

[ClosedSource]

"Yes, the problem is that the rank-and-file know exactly which half could be cut."

Sure, the other half.

Productive people leave a big footprint

[ClosedSource]

"For the economy to recover, those people will end up having to find something else (productive) to do."

It finally dawned on me why some conservatives refer to the rich as "the most productive individuals". Being productive is all about consuming resources and expending energy and who does that better than the wealthy?

Re:MySQL isn't nearly worth the losses Sun is taki

[ClosedSource]

"I don't even know why Sun paid a billion for it in the first place."

Perhaps Oracle thinks they can come up with another private antitrust case against MS that's worth more than a billion. Wasn't that why AOL bought Netscape?

Re:MySQL isn't nearly worth the losses Sun is taki

[DragonWriter]

If they were rational they would have jettisoned MySQL at the first sign of EU resistance.

If you assume that MySQL is an important Sun asset that was a significant factor in Oracle deciding to make the deal, then they wouldn't jettison at the first sign of regulatory resistance, especially if they anticipated that there might be some of that.

If you assume that the various critics are right, and MySQL is mostly a threat to Oracle they want to kill rather than maintain, then the uncertainty about the future of MySQL created by the EU's regulatory attention, and the damage it can do to MySQL in the market, is valuable to Oracle and serves the exact same goal that the critics think Oracle would be seeking to advance by buying Sun then killing MySQL. Plus, it lets Oracle blame it on the EU.

So, I fail to see the justification for your conclusion that "if they were rational they would have jettisoned MySQL at the first sign of EU resistance".

resellers

[Anonymous Coward]

I dunno what Sun people do anymore. Every time I've called Sun for the last 5 or 6 years they seemed only vaguely interested in selling me a computer.

Sun generally works through resellers, so the internal sales organization is mostly geared towards large volume customers (gov't, major banks, telcos, etc.).

If you're a "small fry" try contacting CDW.

Oh the irony ...

[zuperduperman]

There's a certain irony that a company is being driven into bankruptcy (yeah they are a way from that, but that is where the trajectory points) by a process accusing them of being so dominant the market cannot operate fairly. It really can't be both ways.

Re:Oh the irony ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Your remark makes sense. Get the fuck out of here.

Ain't regulation grand?

[Anonymous Coward]

Makes perfectly good sense to destroy a company's profitability and the company with it in order to make sure that provides much needed competition in the market place. Bureaucrats are power hungry idiots regardless of what side of the ocean you're on.

Re:MySQL isn't nearly worth the losses Sun is taki

[etymxris]

But really, in the short term I don't see the schedule of the merger really affecting the scale of the losses. The uncertainty of Suns customers wouldn't be ameliorated by having Oracle finalized as an owner, so pretty much the only thing that'd change would perhaps be the interest rate on some loans.

It simply isn't the EU that's causing the losses and they'd be there either way.

Sun's losses have everything to do with the delays in their acquisition by Oracle. What's happening is that Sun's future is now uncertain. Sun is either bought by Oracle or they go out of business. Businesses hate uncertainty. Sun may still be in business next year, or maybe they won't be. That's not reassuring. So businesses are dumping Sun's products left and right, even faster than they were before. It is likely that there would have been serious financial and market share losses anyway, but the EU delays have made things much worse than they otherwise would have been.

payback

[Anonymous Coward]

This is Europeans screwing Americans. How many Americans would care if Audi merged with Mercedes or Ericson merged with Philips? And how PO'd would Europeans be if America interfered? This is just payback for America interfering with Germany's attempts to merge with the rest of Europe in 1914 and 1939 and interfering with Russia's desire to acquire warm water ports in France or Italy.

Re:payback

[Ash-Fox]

This is Europeans screwing Americans.

No, this is the cost of doing buisness in Europe, for any company. Be it American, African, Asian, European etc.

Apple can't take server share

[Ilgaz]

While OS X Server is real underrated state of art UNIX which can do amazing things, Apple isn't and can't be a "server" competitor unless they allow OS X Server to run on "generic" x86.

While not widely known, OS X server can be used as a client, you can even play all the games on it even with better performance. So, they can't make "blade only" Apple OS X server. It would mean the end of "OS X working only on Apple hardware". I mean it is not AIX.

Forget everything, Apple can't compete in "support" department for servers. There is Big Blue there, Dell there, HP there and of course, Sun with decades old agreements and happy customers who expects same kind of service.

Of course, if you consider the things you can do with distributed computing (Xserve), spotlight (server version), it is sad but industry hates brand hardware without any competition. Java's (especially J2EE) success and mainframes coming back to life is also related to that trend, people choose Java because it will work anywhere, any CPU and even any OS with minor modifications.

Re:Apple can't take server share

[illumin8]

While OS X Server is real underrated state of art UNIX which can do amazing things, Apple isn't and can't be a "server" competitor unless they allow OS X Server to run on "generic" x86.

The main problem with OS X as a server is that the multi-thread libraries create a huge amount of overhead for applications like SQL databases to perform well. I saw some MySQL benchmarks and OS X server was absolutely atrocious performance wise compared to Linux on similar hardware.

OS X makes a great desktop UNIX, but it's kernel and OS libraries are optimized for desktop environments, not server environments. Making it UNIX under the hood is definitely a step in the right direction, but even Linux distros optimize differently for server or workstation roles. You probably wouldn't use a realtime kernel patch on a server, but you definitely would do it on a desktop workstation.

Re:MySQL isn't nearly worth the losses Sun is taki

[tsotha]

My read is Oracle is using the threat of job losses to hold the EU's feet to the fire. No matter what kind of up-front work they've done it's a long, drawn out process. By threatening to cut jobs, especially jobs in Europe, Oracle hopes to apply political pressure on the regulators. Politicians don't like to be in a position where they might get blamed for job losses.

Re:MySQL isn't nearly worth the losses Sun is taki

[dkf]

Politicians don't like to be in a position where they might get blamed for job losses.

Actually they don't mind too much (especially during recessions) so long as the job losses fall somewhere else than their constituency. Since EU commissioners are nominated by their home countries and serve 5 year terms, they're difficult to pressurize in the way you're thinking (and national governments find it very convenient to let the EU force them into unpleasant actions; shifts the blame nicely...)

Re:MySQL isn't nearly worth the losses Sun is taki

[Anonymous Coward]

You seem to greatly over estimate the intelligence of people at a large corporation. Also this type of merger has had no problem going through the EU in the past, so somebody is probably getting paid to delay this a bit. Do you honestly believe that Oracle wouldn't show all the competitors that still exist "if" this deal gets approved? Think about that for a second... A FREAKING billion dollar deal and all this paid off lady wants is some proof a competition? My bet is Oracle has shown that multiple times and will show it again. Lets think about this... IBM, HP, Microsoft/Intel, Microsoft/Dell. Hell just Microsoft alone (yes they have a hardware division). So the real question is who benefits from this delay? The above companies. Who probably gains the most? IBM and HP, then Microsoft. You want to take a bet that at least one of those companies has some money trail to the E.U.?

Re:MySQL isn't nearly worth the losses Sun is taki

[davecb]

They didn't expect Microsoft to complain to the EC about a non-credible risk to a product that MS competes with...

After the fact, one can see why MS wanted the EC and Ms. Kroes to be distracted from enforcing their rulings against MS. Beforehand, though, one wouldn't really predict that MS would astroturf the EC over MySQL, of all things!

--dave

Re:MySQL isn't nearly worth the losses Sun is taki

[Anonymous Coward]

Sun is generating the kill list internally and submitting it for vetting by Oracle. Roughly 10 to 15% of people who would have been axed weren't because of consultation with Oracle.

Anon for job security reasons.

Re:MySQL isn't nearly worth the losses Sun is taki

[WuphonsReach]

I doubt Ellison has any love loss for MySQL considering A) he is ruthless and B) MySQL and other open source DB's have cost him billions over the years.

Or so he would love for you to believe.

Use of MySQL does not mean that those users would have used Oracle if MySQL (or other) was not available. They could have easily turned to any of a dozen other commercial database products.

Re:MySQL isn't nearly worth the losses Sun is taki

[Anonymous Coward]

If they were rational they would have jettisoned MySQL at the first sign of EU resistance.

The fact that Oracle didn't do exactly that is really the strongest indication that Oracle really did have some anticompetitive intent with the acquisition.

Oh, c'mon. They're buying a company with multiple assets. You have to assume they offered the money they did because they expected value from those assets. To say categorically that not jettisoning any given asset is "anticompetitive" in intent is bordering on paranoid. How about, "the fact that Oracle didn't jettison MySQL is a strong indication that Oracle sees value in owning MySQL, and sees no benefit in dumping it just because someone asks them to for no good reason."

Was a typo, after all.

[Zontar The Mindless]

False alarm.

The BBC's story has been amended to read, "has promised not to sell off MySQL to get the deal approved".

Not Good News for Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

Ask any head hunter how easy it is to poach people from Sun - NOT.

I know people that work both at Sun and at Apple and I can quite confidently say that there would be some cultural mismatches.

There are a lot of talented people still at Sun because they enjoy being at Sun, despite the rocky ride that has been the last n years and despite the numerous approaches from head hunters. People I've spoken to have said they'd want more than a 15% increase in salary if required to jump ship because the value of the Sun culture and workplace environment.

Can you spend 2 months telecommuting from interstate because you want to spend time with your mother before she dies? How do you put a value on that? Some bay area companies (hint: VMWare) do not allow any telecommuting.

Re:Not Good News for Apple

[Jason Earl]

I am sure that Sun was an excellent company to work for. I am also sure that things are likely to change, quite drastically, thanks to the fact that Sun as a company has essentially failed and the remnants of that company are about to be eaten by Oracle. I have no idea how Oracle treats its employees, but I wouldn't be surprised if there was at least some degree of cultural mismatch between Oracle and Sun.

I imagine that headhunters are having a much easier time poaching from Sun right now than they have in the past. There is a great deal of uncertainty at Sun, and many of Sun's most talented employees are very likely to take advantage of other offers. The longer the merger drags on, the more the level of uncertainty will rise, and the more quality employees Sun will lose.

Sun bought MySQL for one billion

[Asian Freud]

What can Oracle do now? No one will spend anywhere close to one billion for MySQL.

In effect EU regulators are asking Oracle to burn one billion dollar.

Prove a negative?

[ratpick]

So, the EU Comissioner asked Oracle for "...hard evidence that there were no competition problems..." Gee, I wonder why they were unable to produce evidence of a negative quality? Was Oracle expected to investigate every possible competition problem and assure this fool--er, person--that none were valid? If this quote is accurate, it would seem to make a strong argument for biased treatment of this merger.

Just one world: MySQL

[jotaeleemeese]

It is no coincidence that Oracle has said precious little regarding MySQL (and also regarding Solaris and OpenSolaris)

MySQL is the most popular database for web deployments, if you think there is no conflict to be investigated then you are either naive or malicious, only you know.

Governments can't just decide to ignore their own rules and regulations if jobs are at stake, such attitudes would lead only to corruption and undermining of the rule of law.

You don't understand causation, do you?

[jotaeleemeese]

Sun's dire economic predicaments have been brewing since the collapse of the dotcom bubble.

Sun, for reasons we could spend days discussing, failed on the execution of their tactics and put themselves in a position where all the good work they made may disappears or be substantially changed very soon.

That lack of good business execution came way before the Oracle takeover and the EU investigating monopolistic concerns.

it is also worth nothing that official government bodies of any kind should do their job as they are tasked to do. The EU is not dragging their feet, they are clearly stating that they have requested documentation from Oracle and this has not been forthcoming. How this is the EU's fault is left to be explained to people that are more acquainted to explain false jumps of logic.

Legitimate merger?

[jotaeleemeese]

Sorry, but the people that decide if a merger is legitimate or not are working on it.

We are glad and very flattered to know some people around here have access to all the pertinent facts, but we would prefer that you go back to deciding the issue rather than waste your time ranting in Slashdot.

Wait, unless you have no grasp of all the facts and are assuming too much while knowing too little.

In any case your claim is ridiculous, there are legitimate monopolistic concerns (most glaringly the situation of MySQL) and it is just unfortunate that Oracle and Sun don;t move faster in order to provide all theinformation the EU competition authorities need in order to deal with this faster.

I used to work in a big company ....

[Anonymous Coward]

... and was made redundant. You would recognize their name, but was paid fairly in order not to talk bad things about them, so lets say the example below is just a generic ranting.

I had regional responsibilities providing many critical services to many countries. At some point I was assured my job would be safe no matter what (I did not believe this, I was correct).

My former company preferred to pay a team of 6 guys in a cheap location (no prizes for guessing where) to do the same job I was doing on my own.

The reasoning could not be beaten, they got 6 guys for the price of one (roughly).

This didn't work according to plan, former colleagues tell me that my department is a mess where nobody picks up the phone, things don't get done, and half the people are new (because as soon as they get any good they change jobs to a company that pays them beter).

So, back to topic, yes, companies in trouble do dump top engineers, perhaps misguidedly, but they actually do.

Re:MySQL isn't nearly worth the losses Sun is taki

[Znork]

Sun may still be in business next year, or maybe they won't be.

And with Oracle, they may be committed to their current lines, or they wont, and the prices may skyrocket, or maybe they wont. Maybe you'll get some support. Or maybe any support will be fired (but hey, here's a metalink account).

For any customers that want reassurance, Oracle simply isn't it. Ellisons sales pitches don't really help, either he's not that up to speed on what he's buying, or he's being less than forthcoming. I'd bet the latter (especially in light of his calculations for turning a profit in a year), but neither is very reassuring. Words are cheap and nobody's going to commit to buying computers today on the promise of future investments in R&D.

So personally I don't really think it affects the loss of customers either way. Uncertain owner or uncertain future, both are equally good reasons to opt out of going along for the ride.

Re:MySQL isn't nearly worth the losses Sun is taki

[Jon_E]

I don't even know why Sun paid a billion for it in the first place.

easy .. to screw Oracle over (who was in turn screwing over their customers to turn more licensing revenue on CMT, HT, containers etc) .. if you look at statements McGnarly made just this past spring (before the IBM deal fell through) you'll find his references of Oracle as a cheap heroin dealer - which falls in line with their misguided tactic to try and take on the oracle empire .. of course now that they've accepted Larry's "drug money" - i don't understand why they don't just spin the whole thing off again .. unless they can't afford to, or there's no other tinkerbell investors who believe enough with their wallet ..

Poor Sun, poor Oracle, poor Elliot

[RichiH]

Maybe if the leading commercial DB company did not indirectly buy the leading OS DB company, this whole thing would have been done with ages ago?

It's not as if the EU hadn't jumped up and down yelling "Sell MySQL" all the time. If Elliot wants to play hardball.. Well, the EU can play it better.

Silly government

[jimmy_dean]

The real problem here is that the EC wants to have it's hand in everything. There is no such thing as a monopoly except that which is granted by a sovereign government. Yes there are highly uncompetitive markets, but you still always have a choice not to buy something. I'm sick and tired of governments getting in the way of things that they have no business butting into. It's not their company...it's private (non-municipal) and they need to stay away.

And in the middle of this..

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/10/15/java_for_netbooks/

Not sure how any of this would help the situation...

Re:MySQL isn't nearly worth the losses Sun is taki

[Anonymous Coward]

The EU is not holding up Sun.
Sun is holding up Sun.

Comply with the EU or do your business elsewhere.