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Senators Ask EC To Let Oracle-Sun Deal Go Through
An anonymous reader writes "The European Union has managed to do something that US Presidents often find difficult: to make 59 US Senators from both sides of the aisle agree on something. A group led by John Kerry (D) and Orrin Hatch (R) has sent a letter to the European Union, asking it to wrap up the investigation of the Oracle-Sun merger and let the deal go through. Interestingly, the letter emphasizes the damage the delay and uncertainty are doing to Sun." The article paraphrases a Gartner analyst, who points out that the Senators' letter "comes from a US point of view and doesn't take into account how the EU operates."
"managed to do something that US Presidents often find difficult: to make 59 US Senators from both sides of the aisle agree on something."
The lobbists agree => the senators agree.
That quote is rather bizarre. It seems to be implying that having a market utterly dominated by a few large companies instead of being composed of many smaller, less individually influential ones isn't harmful to consumers.
IMHO the EU has a fairly limited view on data storage, the biggest challenge Oracle will face in the next 10 years is answering the question: why do we need a relational database to store our data? I find developing with Java / Hibernate against a relational database very time consuming and was it not that I invested so much time and effort in learning these technologies I would drop them straight away and explore alternatives. The fact that Oracle will add another SQL database to their product range doesn't change this fact that much at all. What I'm trying to say here is that the European Commission doesn't seem to understand that the competition will come from a completely different direction. And keeping the different database brands separate doesn't matter that much.
I agree with you, I didn't write: "that philosophy plays into the Sun/Oracle situation" ;-))
But can we be absolutely sure that Oracle buying Sun was the one and only way to get Sun out of financial problems ?
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
The profitable parts (and some non-profitable, but believed to be profitable or able to be made profitable) would be sold off.
or, rather, the 'expensive' employees will be RIF'd.
I was. we had a large RIF about 3 weeks ago. didn't make the news did it? curious, that.
sun can go to hell now, for all I care.
Funnily enough, all those details you mention are not within the control of the european commission, and people would probably be up in arms if they wanted to regulate drinking age or maximum speed.
I completely disagree - open source OSs are not viable alternatives for worldwide adoption. Sure they are, if you can spend several years training every person in the world solely on computer use, or if you can mandate that only clever people are allowed to use computers, but the knowledge required to use OSS alternatives are higher than for Windows.
It's contradictory to claim that Microsoft is used on platforms where there is no technological fit and that there, their pricing is higher. Platform developers are free to choose their operating system, and e.g. their share of the smartphone market is very limited. If the developer of a Smartphone is free to choose another OS, how is not the operator of an airport free to choose another OS for their display screens?
Of course, you can come up with sociological arguments regarding hurdle costs and inefficient-steady-state preservation. But so could I. If you open up to sociological arguments, there are no limits to what causes and effects can be claimed.
If you're going to be pedantic I'll join :)
You are, in fact, an American. The US is a federation, meaning power is granted by the federal government to the lower states. So the government of the US determines whether a state can set a legal drinking age, or whether that is up to the US government itself. The European union is a union of sovereign states. It is the sovereign states that determine (together) which powers are granted to the union government. That's quite a big difference.
Another way to determine your nationality is to check your passport. Mine certainly doesn't say European Union like yours says United States ;)
Two years from now we will either have a single Oracle/Sun company or a single Oracle company.
Only if you believe that a company the size of Sun can disappear in a puff of smoke. :-)
Sure, Sun would probably go bancrupt. The profitable parts (and some non-profitable, but believed to be profitable or able to be made profitable) would be sold off. A bunch of employees would start their own "Sun 2". Consulting firms would step in to take over maintainance contracts.
Interesting stuff happens when the old dog leaves the barn, you know?
of course they can... remember DEC? Digital was going up in a puff of smoke until Compaq acquired the remains.
Where are the Alpha boxes and OSX now?
> It's very simple, if Oracle wants to sell in the European markets they have to obey the European
> fair-competition rules. If they don't like them they can leave the market. In the same way, if any
> European company wants to sell in the US market they have to obey the US fair-competition
> rules or leave the market.
And what happens if the EU ignores it's own fair-competition rules and tries to block the
sale for political purposes?
Not defending MS in the slightest, but it's extremely naive to think Open Source, and especially Linux is not recieving heavy funding and help fom the biggest players in the market. http://www.linuxfoundation.org/about/members