Concerns of OSS Groups with respect to MYSQL’s take over by Oracle
Oracle’s take over of Sun Microsystems has given rise to concerns with respect to MYSQL, a database that will pass on to Oracle as a part of the take over. MYSQL is a competing product of Oracle’s database and therefore there are concerns that the take over by Oracle could be anti-competitive. The EU Commission is presently investigating the take over from the anti-competitive angle.
As of now, MYSQL database is currently available under a dual licensing model. It is available under GNU General Public License Version 2 and also a commercial license. Open Source Groups opposing the take over of MYSQL believe that once Oracle takes over the database, it will reduce investments in the database and thereby minimize competition to its own databases. It is estimated by a few open source groups that Oracle loses close to one billion dollars every year due to MYSQL’s competition. Most people are of the opinion that it will not be long before the EU Commission gives its nod to the take over. Open source software groups are trying their best to put pressure on EU and other countries in order to prevent the take over of MYSQL.
This will be catastrophe if oracle takes of MYSQL.. We will have a situation akin microsoft having monopoly of the OS market, but in the database space there will no other company having any say in the database space and it will be a situation where in oracle will have a monopoly in this space which is not entertaining news to the OSS community. Oracle has systematically either bought out database like siebel, berkerley etc or have killed competition in the database space. This will be death kneel for developers who invariable need a Open source database like MYSQL for their developement activities. The EU has already shown resistance in the internet explorer case of microsoft and hope they put a condition that MYSQL open licensing should continue but once it is bought out they will surely kill the product or make it redundant.