Brussels welcomes Oracle's concessions in Sun bid
The EU's competition watchdog on Monday welcomed concessions made by US business software giant Oracle over its bid for Sun Microsystems, saying the deal is now likely to be approved.
The European Commission, in a statement, said its discussions with Oracle had been "constructive."
EU Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes "is optimistic that the case will have a satisfactory outcome, while ensuring that the transaction will not have an adverse impact on effective competition in the European database market," the EU's executive arm said in a statement.
"Today's announcement by Oracle of a series of undertakings to customers, developers and users of MySQL (open source database) is an important new element to be taken into account in the ongoing proceedings," the commission underlined.
The commission is particularly impressed by Oracle's extension for up to five years of the terms and conditions of existing commercial licenses.
"Oracle has engaged in constructive discussions with the European Commission regarding the concerns expressed by the Commission about the Oracle/Sun Microsystems transaction," the California technology firm told AFP.
"In particular the maintenance of MySQL as a competitive force in the database market."
MySQL is a data management system used in millions of business networks worldwide.
Oracle promised to continue to support, develop and provide MySQL technology.
"The geographic scope of these commitments shall be worldwide and these commitments shall continue until the fifth anniversary of the closing of the transaction," Oracle said in a response detailing specifics of the vow.
The 5.17-billion-euro (7.57-billion-dollar) deal for Sun, a one-time Silicon Valley star and developer of the popular Java programming language, was approved by Sun shareholders in July and the US Department of Justice in August.
(c) 2009 AFP
