Winning the blessing of regulators in Europe hasn’t been an easy task for Oracle as it tries to close its acquisition of Sun Microsystems. But the database giant might have made some headway over the weekend with a laundry list of commitments designed to allay the anticompetitive concerns. Database Journal takes a look at what Oracle promised, and how the EU responded.
It was a weekend of holiday shopping for many Americans and Europeans, but in Brussels, Larry Ellison’s troops were making their pitch to the European Union on why Oracle’s purchase of Sun should be allowed to go through.
And now, it looks like their argument may be finding some support ahead of the EC’s Jan. 27 deadline to make a decision on the merger.
Over the weekend, Oracle (NASDAQ: ORCL) made a lengthy, 10-point list of commitments that it said would help maintain and enhance the viability of the Sun-owned, open source MySQL database at the heart of its dispute with European regulators.
In the document, Oracle makes some significant promises. One of the list items said the company would spend more on research and development for the MySQL Global Business Unit “than Sun spent in its most recent fiscal year (USD $24 million) preceding the closing of the transaction.”
It also pledged future releases under the GPL public license, as well as committing to synchronized releases of the Community and Enterprise versions of MySQL.
