MySQL Community Organizes Last-Minute Anti-Oracle Protest

Posted 01/05/2010 at 5:07am | by Paul Lilly

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MySQL developers from around the world are doing what they can to convince the European Union to rule against Oracle's proposed $7.4 billion takeover bid of Sun Microsystems. And therein lies the problem: there's not much the MySQL community can do at this point.

In a last ditch effort to block the deal, developers took to emailing regulators from not just the EC, but also Russia, China, and various other countries. In addition, they've put together a petition signed by 14,000 MySQL users, all protesting the acquisition.

"In less than one week, during the holiday season, we gathered 50 times more customer support than Oracle claimed three weeks ago, when it presented a few hundred orchestrated letters from customers to the European Commission," MySQL creator Michael Widenius said in a statement. "The campaign has only started, and the number of signatures will double very quickly."

The problem for Widenius, and everyone else who opposes the deal, is that time is quickly running out. Oracle made a series of concessions that has EU regulators ready to approve the deal, and according to eWeek's sources, it's going to happen within the month.

Nevertheless, Widenius promised to keep drumming up support for his campaign right up until the bitter end, which might not be that far off.