I got a call from Monty today, and he told me that its crunch-time: the European Commission is about to come up with a decision on the status of Oracle’s purchase of Sun Microsystems. The part that interested me verbally, and he wrote (you should read: Monty says: Help saving MySQL), was this:

Instead of just working out this with the EC and agree on appropriate remedies to correct the situation, Oracle has instead contacted hundreds of their big customers and asked them to write to the EC and require unconditional acceptance of the deal.

Monty has a simple …

Sun updates Java platform. Red Hat open sources SPICE. And more.

Follow 451 CAOS Links live @caostheory on Twitter and Identi.ca
“Tracking the open source news wires, so you don’t have to.”

For the latest on Oracle’s acquisition of MySQL via Sun, see Everything you always wanted to know about MySQL but were afraid to ask

# Sun has released Java Platform EE 6, Glassfish 3, and NetBeans 6.8.

# Red Hat released its …

Matt Asay is right, in my opinion, to point out the inherent bias in the case Monty Widenius et al have made against Oracle’s potential ownership of MySQL. I would go further, however, in stating that the case being made against Oracle is flawed by the fact that it is so self-serving. For instance:

• I previously noted that the Widenius/Mueller case against Oracle owning Sun/MySQL is entirely dependent on the theory that Oracle will not invest in the ongoing development of MySQL, which is something it has publicly committed to doing.

• The case against Oracle owning Sun is also based on the theory …

Last week, my colleagues Giuseppe, Kai and myself attended the SAPO Codebits event in Lisbon, Portugal. Codebits is an annual, invite-only hacking event, which went on for three days. The venue they chose this year was the "Cordoaria", a former rope factory located in the Belém district, close to the 25 de Abril Bridge (which is an impressive sight!). I have been told that the Cordoaria is the longest building in Portugal and I have no doubts about that! The building is so long that the crew used bicycles to get from one end to the other. I've taken a number of …

Eben Moglen says EC case against Oracle-Sun is flawed. The value of open source. And more.

Follow 451 CAOS Links live @caostheory on Twitter and Identi.ca
“Tracking the open source news wires, so you don’t have to.”

For the latest on Oracle’s acquisition of MySQL via Sun, see Everything you always wanted to know about MySQL but were afraid to ask

# Eben Moglen told the EC he does not see threat to competition from Oracle-Sun, says EC’s objections are flawed. A statement from the SFLC is …

From NY Post: Oracle Leader Blinks – Larry’s Olive Branch (to the EU), the NYpost sources apparently say that “what [...] Ellison is proposing is the creation of a firewall between MySQL and the rest of the combined company, and possibly setting up an entirely separate board for the MySQL business.”

There is no independent confirmation of any of this, so it may be true, or just air, or a trial balloon to see how other parties respond… I’m not going to add opinions to this, I just reckon it’s an interesting progression in the case. We’ll see how it pans out.

Update: so it’s not true (see Reuters).

(so now I’ll add my opinion…) Unfortunate in a way because from my perspective it …

Everyone seems to have an opinion about whether Oracle should be allowed to acquire the MySQL database along with Sun Microsystems including former MySQL/Sun executives, developers, rivals, partners, analysts, journalists, the Department of Justice and even US Senators. What do open source software users think?

We asked the members of the “CAOS user community”* to tell what they thought of the proposed deal, as well as share some details on current database usage. The results have been published in the form of a 451 Group report (subscribers only) but here’s some of the headline figures:

• The use of MySQL is expected to decline from 82.1% of the 347 respondents today as 78.7% expect to be using it in 2011, declining to 72.3% 2014.

• The proposed acquisition of MySQL by Oracle has a part to play in …

Solaris Cluster is a multi-system, multi-site high availability and disaster recovery solution that manages the availability of applications services and data across local, regional and geographically dispersed data centers. The Solaris Cluster environment extends the Solaris Operating System into a cluster operating system.

If you are following the Solaris Cluster product and features, you would have noticed extreme innovation by Sun in the high availability and disaster recovery space since the time we released our first HA product many years ago. For well over a decade, Solaris Cluster has been a market leader for providing business continuity and disaster recovery solutions to all mission critical business applications, spanning all the major industry segments.

Continuing with our tradition of innovation, we are pleased to announce another release - "Solaris Cluster 3.2 11/09" - an update to the Solaris Cluster 3.2 …

Solaris Cluster is a multi-system, multi-site high availability and disaster recovery solution that manages the availability of applications services and data across local, regional and geographically dispersed data centers. The Solaris Cluster environment extends the Solaris Operating System into a cluster operating system.

If you are following the Solaris Cluster product and features, you would have noticed extreme innovation by Sun in the high availability and disaster recovery space since the time we released our first HA product many years ago. For well over a decade, Solaris Cluster has been a market leader for providing business continuity and disaster recovery solutions to all mission critical business applications, spanning all the major industry segments.

Continuing with our tradition of innovation, we are pleased to announce another release - "Solaris Cluster 3.2 11/09" - an update to the Solaris Cluster 3.2 …

This Thursday (December 3rd, 16:00 UTC – note the different time), Bill Karwin will talk about Practical Full-Text Search in MySQL. He'll introduce and compare five different approaches of full-text search with MySQL, using built-in functionality as well as third-party tools. It's interesting to see how vastly performance can vary, depending on which tools you use for which purposes.

For MySQL University sessions, point your browser to this page. You need a browser with a working Flash plugin. You may register for a Dimdim account, but you don't have to. (Dimdim is the conferencing system we're using for MySQL University sessions. It provides integrated voice …