Growing Public Opposition to Oracle Owning Sun’s MySQL - Campaigner: Worse Than fox in Charge of the Henhouse (ORCL, JAVA)

BRUSSELS, Belgium -

- EU Campaigner Sharpens the Tone — World’s Leading Software Freedom Activist Richard Stallman, Knowledge Ecology International (KEI) and Open Rights Group (ORG) ask European Commission to Protect Competition by Blocking Intended Acquisition

Oracle Corporation [ORCL] meets an increasingly vocal resistance to its US$7.4 billion acquisition of Sun Microsystems [JAVA] because of Sun’s open source database MySQL, originally the product of a Swedish startup company. The European Commission and competition authorities in several other jurisdictions are investigating the implications of the transaction.

MySQL creator Michael ‘Monty’ Widenius demanded yesterday, in a press release and on his blog (monty-says.blogspot.com), that Oracle commit to divest MySQL in order to resolve antitrust concerns.

Today, Florian Mueller, an EU strategist and former MySQL shareholder driving the effort in a partnership with Widenius, warned that “letting Oracle have MySQL is worse than putting the fox in charge of the henhouse because the hens are no threat to the fox while MySQL makes Oracle lose customers and forces it to grant discounts to customers threatening to defect.” Mueller had previously helped Widenius’ new company, Monty Program Ab, to argue in front of the EU that the MySQL part of the transaction would have anticompetitive effects.

EU competition commissioner Neelie Kroes today also found an open letter in her mailbox from the world’s foremost software freedom activist Richard Stallman as well as two non-profits, Knowledge Ecology International (KEI) and Open Rights Group (ORG), that starts off with an urgent demand: “Oracle should not be permitted to acquire its competitor, MySQL.” The letter, which was published on the Internet ( keionline.org/ec-mysql ), talks about MySQL having developed, over time, “greater functionality, dependability and improved in performance” and stresses that “forking”, which is the legal possibility for a new free and open source software project to integrate existing program code, is not a viable option to ensure competition in the marketplace, contrary to what defenders of the proposed takeover claim.

About Florian Mueller

Florian Mueller is a software industry veteran with 24 years of experience as well as an award-winning EU policy strategist. Previously founder and CEO of a startup he sold to the Telefonica group, Mueller became in 2001 an adviser to MySQL’s then-CEO on corporate strategy and held shares in the company until its sale.

The Economist Group’s European Voice named Mueller the EU Campaigner of the Year 2005. Mueller was also named to thought leader rankings in intellectual property as well as information technology. In 2007, Mueller worked on an EU competition policy-making process concerning sports broadcasting rights on behalf of Real Madrid CF.

Contact data For further information concerning this news release, please contact Florian Mueller - public policy consulting telephone: +49-8151-21088 mobile: +49-171-2632226 email: florian.mueller@live.com

Source: Florian Mueller public policy consulting

Contact data: For further information concerning this news release, please contact: Florian Mueller - public policy consulting, telephone: +49-8151-21088, mobile: +49-171-2632226, email: florian.mueller at live.com