The EC (European Commission), the European Union’s top competition authority, isn’t crazy about Oracle buying Sun. You might have thought it was just open-source advocates objecting to the deal out of the fear that Oracle, the world’s biggest proprietary DBMS (database management systems) company would close down the most popular open-source DBMS. You’d be wrong. Microsoft wants to block the deal too.
As Mary Jo Foley reported recently, Microsoft is arguing that Oracle shouldn’t be allowed to buy Sun. According to my sources, the reason why Microsoft wants to block the deal has nothing to do with MySQL remaining open source. It’s all about making sure Oracle can’t use MySQL as a low-cost alternative to SQL Server on the low end.
Microsoft’s only toe-hold in serious DBMS work is in the SMB (small-to-medium business) space. Open source or not, a low-price MySQL with Oracle branding could boot Microsoft out of this line. They really, really don’t want to see that.