Last week Eben Moglen, founder and executive director of the Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC), submitted an independent opinion on the Oracle/Sun merger to the European Union (EU). Moglen summarized his submission as follows:

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Topics for this podcast:

*As the Oracle-Sun-MySQL EC world turns
*Google gets its Web on with Go and Chrome
*Open source and cloud computing complement, compete
*How transparent is your open core?

iTunes or direct download (26:20, 6.0 MB)

Hello, and welcome to the 171st edition of Log Buffer, the weekly review of database blogs. Let’s get it going this week with . . . 

Oracle

Uwe Hesse, the Oracle Instructor look at result cache, another brilliant 11g new feature. He says, “There are many amazing New Features in the 11g version, one of them is the possibility to cache the result sets of statements, that access large tables but return relatively few rows. Think of it like automagically created materialized views inside the SGA.” Commenters contribute some thoughts on problems with result cache and latch contention.

Christian Antognini is, as …

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 …

I’ve been trying to dig a bit deeper into the European Commission’s investigation of Oracle’s proposed acquisition of Sun Microsystems, to look beyond the received wisdom about the EC’s concerns about the deal.

We know they revolve around the open source MySQL database, the European Commission has said that much. But the Statement of Objections weighs in at 155 pages, and even those that have read it admit to being confused by it. Meanwhile some of the most vocal parties in the public debate have vested interests in encouraging opinions for or against the deal.

Without knowing precisely what the European Commission wants to achieve it is impossible to come to any conclusions about the investigation. However, here are a few statements and observations:

…

When I talked with journalists, lawyers and analysts about the Oracle/Sun merger case questions were raised about the possibility to fork MySQL and that everybody who is not satisfied with Oracle's future way regarding MySQL could do this. I don't agree with that and I think it's best to put Monty's own words (found in a comment in his blog) here because I can't explain it better:

In addition, the MySQL trademark is so strong that it's hard to impossible for a fork to attract enough attention to be able to compete in a meaningful manner if MySQL would be owned by a vendor that refuses to cooperate and works against the fork.

These are tough days in the case of the Oracle/MySQL decision the EU faces. First of all, the lobbyists of Oracle achieved that the decision deadline will be extended from January, 19th to January, 27th 2010. Secondly, Monty recommended that a license change from GPL to BSD would be a great idea for MySQL's future.

Today, Johann pointed me to a document called "Project Peter" which can be found at wikileaks.org (download PDF from wikileaks.org server in Sweden). It's a presentation of MySQL's Robin Schumacher. You may ask "What is Project Peter?". The presentation says:

…

Chrome OS and Andoid to merge - eventually. Oracle and SpringSource propose Eclipse OSGi project. 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

# Gizmodo reported that Chrome OS and Android are destined to merge, somehow.

# Q&A with open government activist David Eaves about Portland’s …