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Project 2501 by Andy Patrizio (bio)

Making sense of an overwhelming sea of information



The clueless intrude on the Oracle-Sun deal

By Andy Patrizio on October 20, 2009 6:03 PM
What should have been a slam-dunk deal, Oracle's $7.4 billion purchase of Sun, has turned into a tragi-comedy of epic proportions. If there weren't so many people being negatively affected, this would be downright funny.

Today, that noted economist Ralph Nader come out against the deal and urged the EC to reject it. Nader's Knowledge Ecology International group is joined by the U.K.-based Open Rights Group and the eminent capitalist Richard Stallman in opposing the deal.

TheStreet.com reports Nader sent a letter to European Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes, warning that Oracle is bad, bad, bad.

"Oracle seeks to acquire MySQL to prevent further erosion of its share of the market for database software licenses and services, and to protect the high prices now charged for its proprietary database software licenses and services," he wrote. "If Oracle is allowed to acquire MySQL, it will predictably limit the development and functionality of the MySQL platform."

Nader should stick to Pintos because he does not know what he's talking about. If any company would want to buy MySQL to kill it, it's Microsoft. Secondly, Oracle couldn't stop MySQL if it wanted to, since it's open source. Both Larry Ellison and MySQL founder Marten Mikos have pointed out that Oracle couldn't kill MySQL if it wanted to, and Ellison has made it clear he has no intention of doing that.

Now the normal reaction would be to look at Nader and Stallman's objection and laugh, but I'm not optimistic common sense will prevail here. As it stands, this ridiculous delay in closing the deal thanks to the EC investigation has cost 3,000 people their jobs.

Maybe I'm being unfair... there will be blood in the hallways of Sun once Oracle gets its hands on the company, we all know that. So perhaps these people were going to be let go anyway. But as of now, 3,000 Sun staffers are going to lose their jobs thanks to the interminable delays in the Oracle-Sun merger brought on by both our government and the European Commission.

Sun filed an 8-K form with the SEC today that reads:

Effective October 20, 2009, the Board of Directors of Sun Microsystems, Inc. (the "Company"), in light of the delay in the closing of the acquisition of the Company, approved a plan to better align the Company's resources with its strategic business objectives, including reducing its workforce across the North America, EMEA, APAC and Emerging Markets regions by up to 3,000 employees over the next 12 months (the "Restructuring Plan"). The Company expects to incur total charges ranging from $75 million to $125 million over the next several quarters in connection with the Restructuring Plan, the majority of which relates to cash severance costs and is expected to be incurred in the second and third quarters of the fiscal year ending June 30, 2010.
Well, perhaps they saved Larry the task of doing the dirty work.

Between Sun staff, Oracle staff and their respective customers, I have to wonder if these people sticking their nose in this merger have any idea how many lives they are negatively impacting and if they even care.

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2 Comments

ter said:

The loss of jobs due to the delay has to be taken in context.


And just how many individuals do you think Oracle will lay off once the acquisition is approved.Estimates that I have seen go beyond 3,000.

And SUN is announcing layoffs over the next three quarters. The next three quarters are meaningless once Oracle is in control. So SUN's prediction of their own fate is not particularly relevant.

No matter how this plays out, the failure of SUN will cost many jobs. The additional cost of the delay will not be significant.

The delay seems due to Oracle's arrogance and refusal to cooperate with an agency that ultimately decide the fate of this merger.

That is a costly mistake. It also appears that Oracle waited till July 30 to report the merger to the Europeans. While the USA DOJ was informed much earlier. This is often a ploy to pressure the EC into approval. Well it seems to have backfired. If Oracle was in no hurry then, why are they in a hurry now.

--
tor

tor, I said that. Many more will lose their jobs when the deal is done. But at this point we don't know who or in which departments. What's happening now is Sun twists in the wind, rudderless, unable to do anything. Oracle is in a hurry because it's losing a fortune with this delay.

If Catz was indeed uncooperative with the EC, then I am at a loss to explain that. --Andy

October 22, 2009 9:09 PM
EuCluedin said:

So the "clueless Europeans" is whats being targeted here by this mis-titled article, as clearly the all important all mighty American superpowers have cleared the deal therefore Europe should shut up and just do as their Masters have done and approve the deal?

Sun is shedding jobs, is this really news?

When did Sun last add jobs to their headcount by the end of any one year?
When was the last time you know anyone in Suns target market that bought SunStorage or Server hardware?
When was the last major new Solaris Support Contract for a non existing Customer signed?

Look at these figures and that gives you a clue.

The trouble is Sun owns MySQL and Oracle owns one of its database engines and Oracle is the leading Database supplier in the European Market along with the products it has built on top of it. Having the #1 supplier apparently looking after its #1 competing open source product is not most savvy thinking normal unbiased people would consider to be a good idea.

Oh and Mikos has stated that he thinks that Oracle should not be the owner of MySQL too. But none of these facts are brought up in this article for public dissemination. So before you go lambasting us proud Europeans for being a little more probing into the area of big business and its likely implications for such socialist ideals as competition and the free market you might do a little more investigation first?

It is exactly because of sentiment expressed in this article the subprime crisis and all that ensued ended up bringing down many of Americas Financial Institutions. The EU has every right to be worried as Open Source Software has a much larger installed base here than in the 50 states of the US.

Mick.

Actually, I was referring to Stallman and Nader. Nader doesn't know what he's talking about and Stallman... is Stallman. --Andy

October 24, 2009 2:59 PM

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