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IBM and Hewlett-Packard did not plan it better.

The European Union has launched an in-depth investigation of Oracle's acquisition of the Sun, potentially delaying the merger of several months. In doing so, the EU is almost guaranteed the death of Sun hardware business and its competitors who awards the sun on a misunderstanding of the impact of the deal with open source in general, and MySQL, in particular.

If you did not pay attention to, delays in the process of acceding to the U.S. and EU review has already led to two shockingly bad quarter of the Sun Many enterprise customers are already moving to competitors like IBM because of uncertainty about future products Sun, The Wall Street Journal reports.

Further delay only exacerbates the problem.

Unlike the United States, which approved the deal, EU Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes is concerned that Oracle's takeover of the Sun, ultimately reducing competition:

Systems (eg, MySQL) based on open source software is increasingly becoming a viable alternative to proprietary solutions. The Commission must ensure that such alternatives will remain available.

Commission did not have to. From open source MySQL license is already doing. This Open Source: Oracle can not even put an open-source genie back in the bottle once it is released as MySQL has, in accordance with the GNU General Public License.

Note: some people Cheering loud for the EU to stamp on the proposed merger, as representatives of Monty program, have already demonstrated Oracle (a) lack of control over the Sun MySQL. Monty has created a program with a fork, or derivatives, database MySQL, and obstructionism would benefit many of the EU.

Delays in the merger, the EU does not help MySQL. It helps its competitors, including rain, OurDelta, MariaDB (Monty Program forks), Percona etc.

Competition within and around MySQL is alive and well, regardless of Oracle. After all, as former CEO of MySQL Marten Mickos has been talking years, MySQL has never really competed with Oracle, one way or another. MySQL is (and has helped create) a very different markets: the market of web-database.

When asked in April if the Oracle bid for Sun would end up hurting MySQL, Mickos replied: "MySQL for web applications. Oracle for adults, legacy applications." The vast majority of Oracle revenues come from corporate IT. The vast majority of MySQL income comes from companies, the Web, like Facebook, Google, etc.

MySQL and Oracle do not really compete. They live in two completely different markets.

Thus, if anything, the acquisition of Oracle's sun helps it leverage MySQL on the market - the growing market of Internet databases - is a proprietary technology ill-equipped to manage. He also receives a lower cost product with which to bludgeon their real enemy, Microsoft, in conjunction with a greater mark on the increase in the open source community of developers.

Open source is not an enemy in this transaction. Microsoft is.

The EU, however, has made himself an enemy to Oracle, Sun and MySQL, holding up the merger, and this situation will only worsen because of its glacial pace, as CIO.co.uk 'S editor Martin Veitch offers. Customers are not the beneficiaries of his intervention: Server Sun competitors like IBM is.

While the EU wants to be in harmony with the open source, its tiresome confusion reveals an astonishing ignorance of open source, and shows a complete disregard for the true market opportunities MySQL.