Widenius appeals Sun/Oracle acquisition

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Monty Widenius has launched an appeal to the European Union (EU) against the green light given to the acquisition of Sun Microsystems by Oracle.

Although the deal went through in January, the creator of open source database MySQL is not ready to give up the fight and wants the EU to step in.

Widenius filed the appeal to the European Court of Justice late last week.

The controversial acquisition began back in April 2009 when, despite everyone thinking IBM was the front runner, Oracle swooped in and made an offer of $7.4 billion for the company.

The deal quickly got the thumbs up from the US authorities but the European Competition Commission had doubts as to whether its ownership of MySQL would be an unfair advantage on the database market.

Widenius, together with colleague Florian Mueller, leapt on the campaign trail and tried to stop the EU giving its permission but it seemed to fall on deaf ears and eventually Europe agreed the acquisition.

Oracle has just completed its first full quarter with Sun incorporated in the company. The results were impressive, with Sun making a $400 million contribution to the 39 per cent rise in profits.

IT PRO contacted both Widenius and the European Competition Commission but neither had responded to our request for comment at the time of publication.

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