It's finally over, and we couldn't be happier. Not because we have any kind of vested interest in Oracle's takeover of Sun, but now that the acquisition is complete, we can stop following the rollercoaster ride and gain a sense of closure in a story we've been following for too long.

But as happy as we are, Oracle has to be thrilled to put this whole thing behind them, though you'd never know it from the company's ultra-brief press release (see here).

Maybe's Oracle's just worn out, and who can blame them. After gaining quick approval from the U.S. Department of Justice for its proposed $7.4 billion takeover of Sun Microsystems, Oracle, an unstoppable force, ran into the European Union, an immovable object. What happened? Oracle stopped and the EU moved, but not before Oracle gave up a series of concessions dealing with Sun's free MySQL database software.

"My hat is off to one of the greatest capitalists I have ever met, Larry Ellison," Sun Chairman Scott McNealy said in a memo. "To be honest, this is not a note this founder wants to write. Sun, in my mind, should have been the great and surviving consolidator. But I love the market economy and capitalism more than I love my company."

So will Oracle make good on its promise not to treat its MySQL database like a red-headed stepchild? That's the only question that remains to be answered.

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.

Before Rudolph and company head for the skies next week, you may spot a flying pig or two gliding through the clouds. That's the sort of thing that tends to happen when the world turns topsy-turvy, as it seemingly has after the European Commission announced today that it has settled its remaining antitrust issues with Microsoft and is abandoning its case against the software giant.

The two sides have been in dispute for the better part of a decade, and as it turns out, all Microsoft had to do was agree to a legally binding commitment to start marketing rivals' browsers next to its own Internet Explorer.

"Millions of European consumers will benefit from this decision by having a free choice about which web browser they use," said Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes.

A curious statement, considering European consumers have had that choice all along, as did anyone else who chose to run Windows. But regardless of Kroes' poor choice of wording, the issue at hand was the belief that Microsoft was stifling innovation by only including Internet Explorer in Windows, which gave the company a distribution advantage that didn't necessarily reflect a superior browser.

Under terms of the agreement, Microsoft will deliver a ballot screen consisting of its own Internet Explorer, Mozilla's Firefox, Google's Chrome, Apple's Safari, and Opera Software's ASA browser for a five-year period. In addition, OEMs will be allowed to decide for themselves which browser to pre-install, and may turn IE off completely, if they so wish, the Commission said.

Make no mistake - Oracle faces a major "uphill battle" if its to convince the European Union to step aside of its planned $7.4 billion acquisition of Sun Microsystems. And recent comments by the EU's antitrust chief has to make you wonder if the Commission might block the deal out of spite.

"Is this really more important than fixing your own health care system," Neelie Kroes, EU competition commissioner, said in a speech, adding that U.S. senators need to straighten out their priorities.

The below-the-belt comments come in response to a group of 59 U.S. senators writing a letter to Kroes last month urging her to speed up the approval for a deal that could cost thousands of American jobs should it fall through.

But no matter what the senators say, the EU seems to have a tough time accepting Oracle's takeover of Sun, and more specifically, the EU remains concerned over what Oracle will do with the open source database company MySQL once it has control, considering Oracle owns its own paid database software. Because of this, the EU worries that Oracle might refuse to license MySQL to some companies or for specific uses in order to push its own paid software.

European regulators have set a January 27 deadline to decide whether or not to approve the deal.