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Comments: 183 +- Developers: Senators Ask EC To Let Oracle-Sun Deal Go Through on Wednesday November 25, @08:14AM
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kdawson
on Wednesday November 25, @08:14AM
from the sun-is-setting-fast dept.
from the sun-is-setting-fast dept.
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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."
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Submission: Senators ask EC to let Oracle-Sun deal go through by Anonymous Coward
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Glad I am not the only one believing that... (Score:5, Insightful)
From TFA:
"The DoJ runs on completely different competition rules than the EU," he said. "The DoJ looks at where there is harm to consumers. Their decision is businesses can look after themselves. The EU is more likely to be protective of competitors. They believe trade is better with more small competitors."
I am glad I am not the only one believing that... ;-)))
Re:Glad I am not the only one believing that... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Glad I am not the only one believing that... (Score:4, Interesting)
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 ?
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Re:Glad I am not the only one believing that... (Score:4, Insightful)
But can we be absolutely sure that Oracle buying Sun was the one and only way to get Sun out of financial problems ?
No. They could always have accepted IBM's offer. Pick your poison.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
On one hand it may be good that the EU put on the brakes on this since it may make other companies think twice before attempting to buy companies where there may be similar problems.
On the other hand this creates a limbo for the involved companies where they aren't completely married, but neither divorced either.
I think that a lot hangs on the MySQL part where there are groups worrying about the continued life of that database in the hands of Oracle. And they may have a point there.
Re:Glad I am not the only one believing that... (Score:5, Insightful)
Honestly, I think that Sun would have been just as ripe a takeover target for Cisco, who has been recently expanding into the server space. Buying Sun would get them an instant, firm beachhead, as well as merging two companies with highly complementary product lines. Cisco's high end networking gear plus Sun's high performance server line make for an excellent one-stop data center shop for people who don't want to compromise on equipment quality.
Other possible buyers of Sun could be any high end network equipment OEM that's cashed up. If Apple wanted to enter the lucrative server space, acquiring Sun would be a good start, as they have a similar hardware+software as a platform culture. Apple has some server products out there, so presumably they want to at least have a presence, and Sun would be a great way to turn "kind of exists in the space" into "major player in the space".
Oracle+Sun doesn't make sense from a hardware point of view, I just don't see Oracle branded servers happening. From a DB point of view it makes even less sense to me. Oracle is just buying up its most threatening competition with no real apparent strategy.
Personally, I think it's competition elimination, and the DoJ was insane to allow it through. The EU is right to block it. There are better suitors for Sun that are more likely to result in a stronger product range for consumers.
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Re:Glad I am not the only one believing that... (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
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Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
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?
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
No it doesn't. In fact it says the exact-opposite: "The EU believes trade is better with more small competitors."
Re: (Score:2)
I'm talking about the "The DoJ looks at where there is harm to consumers" part of the quote. He's saying the EU is "completely different" from the DoJ and the DoJ would never do this (being concerned about keeping the market full of lots of small competitors), thus implying that he thinks that a lack of competition is not harmful to consumers. Or perhaps he was just very bad with words and meant to say that the DoJ only deals with stuff it thinks harms consumers (not that objectively harms consumers), and t
Re:Glad I am not the only one believing that... (Score:4, Insightful)
We're currently in the situation that the biggest software firm in the world has a hard time delivering an operating system that surpasses the offerings of both a very small competitor and a bunch of hippies with computers (slight exaggeration). Yet the ubiquitous presence of Microsoft operating systems, even in places where they are very clearly not a technological fit, is untouched, and the price of Microsoft software keeps rising to levels where the retail price is almost twice the price of the hardware. This is not economics of scale at work. This is monopolistic marketing resulting in prices which are not justifiable by product quality. Another example: Microsoft is the reason why netbooks are almost exclusively sold with no more than 1GB of RAM and hard disks no bigger than 160GB, despite RAM and hard disk capacity being dirt cheap anywhere else. The price of the package is such that the full price of the Microsoft OS would make it unattractive, but the reduced licensing costs dictate these restrictions on RAM and HD capacity. Microsoft is actively holding back the development of mobile computing because they're not ready for it, and they can only do so because they're in a monopoly position.
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Re: (Score:2)
We're currently in a situation where the low hanging fruit of operating system design has pretty much all been plucked. There haven't been very many major advances in Operating Systems in quite some time. The only reason why Linux appears to be moving ahead more rapidly is because its UI was previously so abysmally poor, and UI Is what is most apparent to people actually using the system. That's not to say that Linux is bad, or Microsoft is good, or Apple or anyone else for that matter. I'm just saying that
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Apple sells computers, which include an operating system, and which has specific benefits and flaws when compared to other operating systems.
Some people like the functionality of the Windows OSs.
Some people like the functionality of Linux OSs.
Some people like the functionality of OSX.
And some people are offended so highly and so badly affected by groupthink that they're reduced to profanity when explaining how they chose to purchase the obsolete technology which best fits their needs.
I use all three, for di
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You missed an important fact: We're not looking at market economics. Microsoft is a monopoly. It can set the prices at will (within the bound created by the cost that a would-be competitor would incur overcoming Microsoft's monopolistic status). This also means that Microsoft can (and does) use its monopolistic profit to maintain its status by undercutting attempts of competition. The smart phone market is an excellent example, because it takes a free competitor to dislodge the abomination that is Windows M
Re: (Score:2)
Well first, your suggestion is utterly asinine. If you break their OS division into a bunch of companies and have them each develop their own fork of Windows, you won't get a bunch of new OSes magically, you'll get a bunch of slightly different forks of Windows. And then they probably find some way to work together to avoid pointless duplication of effort. Everyone's software will still work on all the new Windows forks, so there'll be no reason for developers to make their applications portable. And still
Re: (Score:2)
>>>as I stare at my AT&T bill and ponder how humpty dumpty Ma Bell was put back together again, and why I still can't get FiOS, is that the EU tells King Kong NIMBY - to the benefit of emerging open source service markets there.
>>>
Ma Bell has not been recreated. Ma Bell was a monopoly, whereas today you have many choices for your long distance service. You can even change companies on a whim, simply by buying a competitors' calling card (I have AT&T long distance but my calling c
Re:Glad I am not the only one believing that... (Score:5, Insightful)
I think it is more like the EU would prefer a few large European companies and smaller non-European competitors. If this was SAP buying Sun, it would have been approved months ago.
Yes it would have been approved months ago, but not for the reason you mention. It would have gone through as SAP does not produce a major product in the database market.
The European Competition Commission did not block the sale of MySQL to Sun. That was a big American company buying a smaller European company. They are now questioning (with good reason) whether the number of major players in the Database market should be reduced as Oracle gain even more dominance. Now in an ideal world the sale would have been turned down in the US, but the problem is that SUN may not survive on its own so it has to be taken over by someone. It is currently losing $100 million a month (http://news.cnet.com/8301-1001_3-10379673-92.html).
This is what the US senators are trying to get over to the EU. They are desperately hoping that all the Sun employees in the US do not go adding to the high unemployment there already. However the European Commission has the opposite worry: They are probably very concerned that MySQL will be wound up by Oracle who see it as undercutting there flagship database product. This will contribute heavily to European unemployment instead. Even if the MySQL product continues I cannot see why you would not start to rationalise the development of both products and try and get the two teams more entwined. I know the two products are very different, but the skillset of two teams must be similar and it would be an obvious way to cut SUN's overheads since the majority of the development is community lead anyway. They would try and tempt some Lead MySQL dev's to the states then just cut the rest loose since most of the non-open source parts of MySQL are the parts aimed at enterprise that probably do not sit very well with Oracle anyway.
Ultimately it is highly unlikely that the sale will be blocked, but it is more likely that Oracle may be forced to sell the MySQL division or their existing InnoDB division as a condition of this purchase. I would be quite happy to InnoDB and MySQL rolled into one then sold. This is probably highly unlikely though.
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Selection bias (again) (Score:5, Informative)
This is nothing more than the EU protecting a European company from stiffer competition.
Selection bias. When the EC recently ordered the breakup of two of the world's largest financial institutions (one of which was the largest in the world), you didn't hear about it, because they are based in the Netherlands and the UK and don't make gadgets. As such it's not news that's relevant to slashdot or any other American media, or so you will never hear about it.
The same story with european grocery giants, beer giants, engineering giants and petroleum companies that have been investigated or sanctioned by the EC. By definition, you will never hear about it unless the target is a multinational based in the US, because you have no reason to read foreign media.
I actually do think the EC anti trust office has overused its power under the current commissioner, especially when it comes to dismantling banks, but there is no evidence for any bias based on countries; the harshest measures have been against European companies.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The grocery, beer, and other cases aren't exactly relevant here. In this case, letting Oracle buy Sun they would create a bigger and more powerful direct competitor to the largest European software company, SAP. This is not the case with something like groceries, where non-EU presence is quite limited anyway.
I guess as an employee of SAP I should be happy with the decision, but I don't care too much and think this decision is a pretty stupid one. Yeah, I don't by the MySQL argument either. Worst case scenar
Re:Selection bias (again) (Score:4, Insightful)
Does Intel and Microsoft mean anything to you?
They weren't forced to split up like ING and Royal Bank of Scotland, and those banks weren't even guilty of violating anti trust laws, it was their punishment for receiving government bailouts.
Anyway, the point I wanted to make was that I believe the perception of bias against American companies is an artefact of selective reporting. If evidence to the contrary were to come up, I suspect retaliations in the form of sanctions and/or WTO would follow.
As I understand it, the EC anti trust office acts when it receives complaints rather than going out searching for violations. I suppose it's possible they acted on a complaint filed by SAP, but that doesn't necessarily mean the EC had an anti American or pro SAP bias.
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SAP vs Oracle (Score:3, Insightful)
SAP 1 Oracle 0
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Actually, it looks like Oracle won by over 2m results [googlefight.com]...
As a European, let me be the first to say... (Score:2)
Ah, what the heck they said it much better than I ever would [youtube.com]. The fake French accent only adds to the hilarity.
Hold on (Score:5, Insightful)
For starters: This is not a clever approach to deal with the European commision. Oracle could sell MySQL and there would be no problem at all. But no, ol' Larry decided to get confrontational.
Further, the EU Commissions role is to ensure a competitive, fair and transparent market and to protect the consumer from abuse not to ensure Suns or Oracles profit, as the letter appears to imply.
Thanks for trying, but no cigar for you senator dudes.
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For starters: This is not a clever approach to deal with the European commision. Oracle could sell MySQL and there would be no problem at all. But no, ol' Larry decided to get confrontational.
A confrontation is hard, but that's more of a showdown. What's even worse than a confrontation is the kind of death march you get when only your side is bleeding. The EU buereucracy isn't "losing" money in the same way Oracle does even though it's very wasteful.
Re:Hold on (Score:4, Insightful)
The mergers and acquisition group at Oracle should have known what they needed to give the commission before the deal was even publicly announced and then handed the commission everything they would need to make a rapid decision. That might have included Ellison deciding up front to jettison MySQL immediately after the acquisition. Right now the decision is being held up because Oracle has asked for more time to prepare a response.
Parent
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Further, the EU Commissions role is to ensure a competitive, fair and transparent market and to protect the consumer from abuse not to ensure Suns or Oracles profit, as the letter appears to imply.
Paradoxical, isn't it.... that a bunch of Eurocrats are now appearing to be more concerned about maintaining a competitive market than the governing body of the USA which was founded on a platform of rejecting oligarchic rule by degenerate aristocrats and royalty in favor of democracy and equal opportunities for all. It's almost embarrassing to contemplate how low the the US senate had to sink to create this impression.
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I don't think a competitive market is what will come of the EU blocking the merger. In fact if Sun goes down on its own, there will be less competition in the server market....
Without Oracle (or somebody's help), Sun is going down hard. They have contributed enormously to the computing industry, and unlike another OS vendor out there lots of their technology has been shared with the world.
From my perspective, I can only think the EU has alterior motives in blocking the Oracle/Sun merger.
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OTOH, what with the distinction being less clear between private and public money in Europe, I can't help wonder if the EU isn't just protecting its own corporate intere
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
FTFS:
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."
Combining that with your comment:
Further, the EU Commissions role is to ensure a competitive, fair and transparent market and to protect the consumer from abuse not to ensure Suns or Oracles profit, as the letter appears to imply.
The obvious implication is that the Senators in question (as well as the FTC) think that their job is to protect Sun's and Oracle's profits, not protect citizens from abuse. That says loads about the state of the US federal government right now. In addition, there's good reason to think that they didn't expect the public to find out about their actions, or if they did, interpret it as the senators protecting their jobs from the evil European socialists.
Your lobbyists at work (Score:5, Interesting)
"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.
Re:Your lobbyists at work (Score:4, Insightful)
The lobbists agree => the senators agree.
Agreed. And I never understood why people aren't up in arms over the lobby situation. Isn't lobbying just organized corruption?
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Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Lobbying is specifically permitted via the first amendment: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
That said, I share your perception that the lobbying process is a corrupt one and that it almost entirely is the result of businesses and unions, who DO NOT HAVE THE RIGHT TO VOT
Re: (Score:2)
Oposite result (Score:5, Insightful)
Lets see if I got this right:
- The legislators of the 2nd largest western economy, pushed by lobbyists and in order to further the economic gains of companies based in their economic zone try to interfere in the internal affairs of the top largest western economy.
Sure, that's bound to work.
It's just as likely succeed as it would be if members of the European Parliament where trying to influence the US competition authorities with regards to European companies that have activities in US soil.
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.
Honestly, Oracle having the legislators of a sovereign nation trying to influence the due process in an totally different economic and political block might very well be construed as an insult and have the opposite effect of what they intend.
What's next, will we have the People's Assembly of China send a letter to the European Commission saying "You guys over-reacted on the whole toxic paint on child's toys thing" ???
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What's next, will we have the People's Assembly of China send a letter to the European Commission saying "You guys over-reacted on the whole toxic paint on child's toys thing" ???
I'm not sure if it's intentional, but you've made a hell of a good point right there.
I strongly suspect that the manufacturing capacity of Europe is rather a lot smaller than the total EU-wide demand for consumer goods (eg. childs toys). It follows that if the EC were to receive such a letter, they couldn't very well respond by saying "Fine. We'll embargo all your products" for very long - they'd drive the prices for a lot of items up so high that the politicians in member states would have Hell to pay.
It's really hard to judge this one ... (Score:3, Insightful)
Because there are tons of vested interests. SAP is based in the EU, so there's the possibility they're lobbying the EC on this one. One assumes that Oracle / Sun are lobbying US senators (and politicians in the EU for that matter?). The EU, as the article points out, works under different rules and with a different viewpoint - Oracle and Sun agreed to be bound by local laws when they entered the European markets. The EU probably has a political interest in seeming to stand up to the US, though you'd hope the regulators wouldn't be swayed into unprofessional behaviour by that. The US has an interest in avoiding a precedent where the EU has power over one of their companies. Sun and Oracle are probably trying to dodge awkward questions and hope for the EU to cave. Really, there's no reason to believe 100% that anyone is acting entirely in good faith here, especially given we don't have access to all the information.
We're seeing an interesting consequence of the increasingly interconnected world, though, in that we're reaping business advantages from setting up shop in multiple large markets but in turn companies are then subject to multiple jurisdictions regardless of their country of origin. It seems like the EU and US regulators working together on a decision might be more appropriate, given neither of them has absolute authority to give the go ahead. A co-operative solution to regulation decisions would make a certain amount of sense since it's de facto what we have now. It's surely in nobody's interests for the decision to be left hanging.
Not all that rare... (Score:2)
But yes, this is a another situation where I'd like our senators to SHUT UP.
If the EU wants to delay a decent company being swallowed by one that pisses me off daily, that's FINE.
Yes, I know it only delays the inevitable. But Sun becomes worth less to Oracle every day this gets delayed. AND I'M OK WITH THAT.
"asking it to"? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
In other words the EU is more like the US then Europeans want to admit. They keep insisting "We are not one single country" even though it's clear to outside observers that's exactly what they have become, and as the central government starts regulating nitty-gritty details like how fast you can drive on your roads, or the universal drinking age, it will become self-evident.
BTW European readers:
Please don't call me an "American". Like the EU we are not only single country; we are many. Please call me "Vi
Re:No legitimate concerns (Score:5, Interesting)
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 ;)
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I think you have that backwards.
In the USA, The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people. [wikipedia.org]
In the EU, EU law has direct effect within the legal systems of its Member States, and overrides national law in many areas, especially in areas covered by the Single Market. [wikipedia.org]
The Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe [wikipedia.org] would have limited the competences of the EU to only those areas voluntarily confer [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
>>>There is a USian collective consciousness. There is no European collective consciousness.
Wait 20 or maybe 40 years, until the old people die out and the new generations start calling themselves "Europeans". In fact I'm already seeing this phenomenon taking hold with teenagers and college-aged adults, where they identify themselves as European and then I have to ask a followup question, "What part of Europe?"
Re: (Score:2)
I think one concern is that allowing Oracle to control MySql is in a way asking the fox to guard the henhouse. If the solution is to wait for a fork of MySql, then you might as well force Oracle to divest MySql directly. Else you've effectively allowed Oracle to kill of the MySql brand.
Another thing is that Oracle formally announced the merger two weaks earlier in the US than in Europe, effectively making sure that the US authorities would be first to publish their verdict. As I read it in the newspaper, th
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MySQL is OSS but the problem is that if you fork it you will end up with something that is quite difficult to support commercially because it will be gpl only, meaning that you can't use the mysql lib(And thus mysql itself) from closed source(Or just non gpl compatible) software.
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The EC has to stop interfering in things it does not understand.
First the ridiculous Microsoft case, and now this?
The easiest way to stop the EC from interfering is by not selling your products on the European market. ...)
Use our market, obey our rules. Simply put. (It's a bit like the old American saying about 'eating cakes'
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Doesn't matter - the act was still a petty attack on the French.