LEX Open roads, open fields, open source. There is a tendency to romanticise the joys of freedom, including the benefits accrued from placing underlying source code for widely used software in the public domain. But while there are good reasons for governments to support open source as a matter of public policy – states should use transparent systems and processes – it is hard to see how that extends to a reason to block the takeover of Sun Microsystems by Oracle.
At issue is Oracle’s potential control of MySQL, an open source form of database software often used to run websites, whose developer Sun bought last year for $1bn. The European competition commissioner has filed objections ahead of a January deadline to approve the deal. Oracle will have no incentive to support the development of MySQL into a feasible, cheap competitor to its own corporate database systems. But it is not clear that MySQL can or would necessarily play that role as an independent entity.
