MySQL Journal on Ulitzer

Oracle seems to have divided the open source ranks over the MySQL delay it's having closing its acquisition of Sun.

Eben Moglin, the GPL's most ardent defender and delineator, the lawyer who has worked hand in glove for years with the Free Software Foundation's founder Richard Stallman and who largely wrote the GPL, has reportedly told the EC its analysis of the MySQL market is flawed, a position that is contrary to what Stallman has told the EC.

The news has the anti-Oracle party headed by MySQL founder Monty Widenius and his attack dog Florian Mueller up in arms, belittling Moglin's open source credentials.

According to Reuters, Moglin has told the EC that its statement of objections (SO) "contains factual errors in its analysis of the role MySQL's licensing terms plays in securing competition in the software industry." MySQL uses a dual license, both the GPL and a commercial license.

Reuters says Moglin told the EC in a letter dated November 19 that the issues it's raised concerning the GPL2 status of MySQL's code "do not warrant a conclusion that this transaction threatens significant anti-competitive consequences."

Moglin reportedly gave Reuters a copy of the letter Thursday and told it Oracle had asked him to analyze the EC's SO.

Mueller is circulating a defensive e-mail saying, "Compared to Richard Stallman he's very unimportant in a GPL context because Richard really founded the movement and developed the concept, Richard is the giant on whose shoulders a lot of people stand and the best ones of those admit that this is the case while some midgets try to deny that fact.

"I met Eben Moglen in 2004 to talk about a legislative process in the EU on software patents and back then it was already clear that he had a GPL-centric not market-oriented agenda. I disagreed with his approach back then (a year later I became the European Campaigner of the Year with my approach) and so I do now. I also got the impression at the time that he was primarily interested in obtaining funding (at the time from MySQL, on whose behalf I met with him) for some initiatives of his (at the time ‘patent busting,' a pretty pointless approach that never got anywhere but some lawyers made some money with it).

"He is now probably just afraid of a possible license change away from the GPL to another open source license entering the remedies discussion, something that I don't propose anyway because a divestiture would be the only approach that entirely eliminates the competition concerns identified.

"I am wholeheartedly convinced that the Commission has perfectly understood all GPL-related issues and the fact of the matter is that if Oracle buys MySQL on the current basis, it will get as much control over an open source project as money can possibly buy. That's why there are serious competition issues."