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EC Formally Objects To Oracle's Purchase of Sun
eldavojohn writes "The EC has presented Oracle and Sun with a statement of objections. Despite the promotion of former MySQL CEO Marten Mickos, the statement seems to focus entirely on
what many have feared: MySQL vs. Oracle databases. From Sun's 8-K SEC filing: 'The Statement of Objections sets out the Commission's preliminary assessment regarding, and is limited to, the combination of Sun's open source MySQL database product with Oracle's enterprise database products and its potential negative effects on competition in the
market for database products.' The EU and the EC are getting a rep for disagreeing with US counterparts." On Monday afternoon the DoJ reiterated its support for the deal. Matthew Aslett has a helpful timeline of the action from the EC.
Well, I'd object to their purchasing the sun as well!!
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
The European Commission (formally the Commission of the European Communities) acts as an executive of the European Union. The body is responsible for proposing legislation, implementing decisions, upholding the Union's treaties and the general day-to-day running of the Union.
European Commies
What do DC and Marvel think?
The EC is.. who now?
EC is European Commission http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Commission
I seriously don't see why Oracle needs MySQL.
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
Let's see...MySQL brings in ~50M a year, Sun is losing 100M a month. Makes no sense why Oracle would want to delay, except for monopolistic reasons.
Oracle is marketed as an high-end database product/set of services. MySql is a low-end one (and please, don't misinterpret this as shot against it). Now, I'm not saying that you won't find companies replacing their Oracle database with a MySql one, but those are very few and far between. Between Oracle and MySql, there are actually quite of slew of decent alternatives (both proprietary and open source).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EC
Effectively, it's the EU.
Population of EU is about 500 million vs. 308 million for the USA, so the EC is kinda significant.
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As I remember it (and I could be remembering it wrong), Sirrus and XM were allowed to merge because the likelihood of both companies continuing without a merger were essentially nil.
Would the EU perform a similar analysis on Sun and figure that, given its situation, the option is either merge with Oracle or go bankrupt, in which case the situation is, conceptually, the same because either way Sun ceases to be a player. Or do they not consider this and simply line up the bullet points, see too much overlap, say no to the merger (which is not the same as an objection, I realize), and just hope that Sun can pull it together by itself?
If I posted this about the acronym "US" you can be damn sure I would mbe modded troll in a heartbeat.
And they are?
Bah. You can't count those Europeans as a whole person!
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
Mod parent up, I'm tired of the /. eds assuming i know what every god damned acronym means. (Sure I can google it, but usually I just move on)
That's assuming you get right definition of "EC". Everyone here seems to assume that googling things will give you the correct or relevant answer.
For example, I googled it and E. Coli doesn't want Oracle in Athens to predict what Apollo will say.
So there!, "why don't you google it" Nazis!
It's NOT me! It's the meds! I'm on 1000mg of Fukitol.
Actually they're multinational companies, and Oracle stands to lose a fair chunk of change if they can't do business in EU countries. Not that I agree with this retarded group's findings. The whole "Can't sustain development without being able to sell proprietary licenses" is bunk. Plenty of opensource projects thrive without being able to sell proprietary licenses. Linux springs to mind.
This is somewhat like preventing Mercedes-Benz from buying Kia in order to prevent a monopoly. As well-stated earlier, Oracle doesn't compete against MySQL often if at all. IBM and Microsoft appear to be the most legitimate competition Oracle has in their DBMS space, and MySQL wouldn't seem to impact the competitive balance all that much. Having said that, who would want MySQL? Cisco, HP, and EMC don't seem like good choices because they all have product families that each would hate to have to tie to a 'Runs Best with MySQL' campaign. Red Hat makes sense from a certain point of view, but I'm not sure they want to diversify into the DBMS space.
They didn't post EU. If I posted NGA would you automatically know what I was talking about?
They can and will fine them, just like they fined Microsoft and Intel. You don't pay? Get fined again. Still don't want to pay? Do your business elsewhere and say bye bye to the biggest market in the world.
If you want to make business within the EU abide you will have to abide to the rules.
IBM may be doing what they can to stir the pot on this. With each delay, Sun's survival is more in question, and more business can be sucked away from Sun by IBM.
The objection (that Oracle will have "control" of an Open Source product like MySQL) is absolutely absurd. First of all, there is nothing Oracle can do to prevent others from continuing to update and support MySQL under GPL. Many Open Source projects continue under GPL. MySQL has a huge "out of Oracle's reach" GPL effort already.
Secondly, the database market is dynamic with many new competitors entering the field. MySQL as a relational database faces competition from a host of nonSQL databases whose performance and capacity relational databases cannot match.
The real problem with the merger is politics for profit and spite. Heaven forbid the EU allows two American companies to merge. The EU likes to keep their own mergers to a minimum .... like with Airbus?
No, the current european-american exchange rate is about 1 to 1.5, so you should count each of us as 1.5 person.
(no seriousness intended)
They have socialized healthcare, i.e. euthanasia committees, so by next week they'll all be dead.
Stephen Hawking might escape, if his wheelchar can make it to the US embassy (free sovereign soil! NUMBER ONE!) in time.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
According to the article the last time the EU/EC contravened a takeover was when they denied General Electric's takeover of Honeywell in 2001. I'd hardly call two denials in a decade a reputation for disagreeing with the US on these matters.
Oracle is pursuing a very good business model with the Sun aquisition.
1) Eliminate somebody else from buying them, like IBM.
2) Get all that neat Java stuff
3) Some hardware engineering but that SPARC stuff really isn't competitive.
4) Get MySQL and finally kill it by letting it wither. MySQL is probably the biggest threat right now to Oracle's dominance in the database marketplace. My controlling
it they can drive the software literally into the ground.
It was a $7B bargain.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
If I posted NGA would you automatically know what I was talking about?
That's completely offensive. I'll have you know my ex girlfriend is black. CRKR.
...but, to answer your question: no.
Well, standing up to badly behaved American companies.
Try some research before you post nationalistic crap like that. The EC has fined european companies in the billions range for violations of anti-corruption laws, does the same anti-trust checks on european companies and so on.
Wake up. 50 years ago, the US had the moral high ground on the rest of the world, but you can't go downhill forever without losing it.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
As an Australian and on Rememberance Day, I withhold my sense of humour for a moment and object to your use of the term "Digger". We use it as a term of endearment toward people who go out and get their asses shot off on our behalf, and something we respect them highly for. Don't dilute that coin please.
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
Although these companies are primarily based in the US they have some fairly substantial operations in the EU. I don't imagine that they like the idea of moving those, especially if it involves moving them further from a market that they're trying to sell into. Europe probably would miss Oracle and MySQL but Oracle-Sun would probably miss having a presence in an enormous market and would not welcome the costs of moving parts of their operation into the US or to other places outside the EU.
When they entered the European markets, these companies did so on the understanding that they'd be required to obey European laws. Therefore I don't believe there's anything to criticize that they are now being held up by these laws - they put themselves in the reach of EU jurisdiction in order to profit in the large markets of the Europe Union, now they're living with the consequences. Objecting to the EU's actual reasoning is fair enough but it's not really reasonable to expect that because a company is based in the US it will not encounter different legal situations when it runs significant businesses in other parts of the world.
You're right. If we go by body mass, one European (~70 kg) makes about 1/4th of an American. But hey, by that same metric, the USA have about the same population as China!
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
Yeah, but then it looks like an Alien humping a cow.
Moral high ground? Would that be after stooping to the level of the USSR in playing third-world countries like pawns -- the CIA coups in Iran or Guatemala in the early fifties? After backstabbing her allies at Suez a few years later? Or after encouraging the Hungarians that same year? Or were you thinking back to the World War -- and the wonderful economic timing of joining it two years late, when her last ally was finally bankrupt?
Come to think of it, I can't remember any instance where the US had the moral high ground since its revolution. Sure, if you compare it to the Soviet Union, it had the moral high ground, but that's not much of a comparison, is it?
This isn't a dig at the US, it's a decent country. But far too much of its propaganda is still believed, probably because it's top nation.
The EU and the EC are getting a rep for disagreeing with US counterparts.
They're getting a rep for doing their jobs, in other words. The same cannot be said for their U.S. counterparts who have assumed the role of the fox guarding the hen house.
"...not specifically American nerds."
Are you sure?
http://slashdot.org/faq/editorial.shtml#ed850
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"Sure, if you compare it to the Soviet Union, it had the moral high ground, but that's not much of a comparison, is it?"
Versus the history of europe over the last hundred years the US definitely does have the high moral ground. The Soviets make a good showing as well. Let's see in europe, military uprisings/WWI, hitler/jews/WWII, political massacres by eastern european dictators, the genocides in the balkans, armenian genocides in turkey, fighting in northern Ireland, and europe's obvious indifference to corruption and suffering in its own back yard until the US steps or gets sucked in to stop it. There's more and this is just the last 100 years. Europe is nowhere near a bunch of angels, changing your name to the EU doesn't erase the past or change current attitudes or behavior.
How many people have died in the political games/wars/incursions in europe or because of europe? The US and even the Soviet Union would have had a lot of catching up to do. When it comes to morals the EU is in no position to say anything.