[A2k] KEI: Eben Moglen's neutron bomb therory of MySQL has some flaws

[Thiru Balasubramaniam]

http://keionline.org/neutronbomb

Eben Moglen's neutron bomb therory of MySQL has some flaws
By James Love
Created 8 Dec 2009 - 9:48pm

In a letter to the European Commission defending the Oracle
acquisition of MySQL [1], Eben Moglen makes the following argument.

     30. . . . Whether or not MySQL is a significant =93competitive
constraint=94 on the selling of Oracle 11, MySQL is an effective, indeed
potentially lethal competitor for the much less powerful Microsoft
product. For Sun, and a fortiori for Oracle, the rather scant dual-
license revenue available from MySQL, or the long-term negative
consequences from competition between MySQL and the top-drawer product
line, must be significantly outweighed by the value of GPL=92d MySQL,
available at near-zero price, as a formidable competitor against
Microsoft=92s only database offering.

     39. For these and other reasons, a decision by Oracle to keep
MySQL nominally alive as an Oracle product but to actively discourage
commons co-development is likely to fail. It would require
investments, produce little revenue, abandon an opportunity to cause
disproportionate competitive harm to Microsoft, and it would
irreparably damage Oracle=92s standing with the free and open source
software communities on which it will be inclined to cooperate over
other assets, including OpenOffice, OpenSolaris, and Java, which it
has acquired from Sun Microsystems and in which it is also already
significantly invested. Such a course is therefore neither rational
nor likely to be successful, and I think it is reasonable to predict
that it is not going to be tried.

Moglen effectively minimizes the notion that MySQL competes with the
Oracle database offering, but sees MySQL as sort of a neutron bomb [2]
that will destroy Microsoft, while leaving Oracle intact, while Oracle
continues to charge super high prices for its services.

The problems with Moglen's neutron bomb theory are obvious. Microsoft
is already an effective and aggressive competitor to Oracle. To the
extent that MySQL influences Microsoft, it will be in the short run to
exert downward prices on the Microsoft product, which puts even more
pressure on the Oracle's pricing. If eventually MySQL can replace
Microsoft's as a free alternative doing what Microsoft does now, this
can only put even more pressure on Oracle's pricing.

In the view of KEI, if the government relations and sales departments
of Oracle and Microsoft were not as politically powerful* as they are
today, the U.S. government would already be mitigating many database
services to free software platforms, including services that use
MySQL. If MySQL is owned by a company that has a sales force issuing
FUD against MySQL, it can't be good for the future of MySQL.

In the end, Moglen's defense of Oracle comes down to the claim that
Oracle can't harm MySQL users, even though it owns the MySQL company.

If the GPL license itself is as effective in protecting the public
from anticompetitive conduct as Moglen asserts, then why would anyone
ever bother to acquire MySQL? Why is MySQL, a unit with less than 100
employees and "scant revenue," a deal breaker for Oracle?

Source URL: http://keionline.org/neutronbomb

Links:
[1] http://www.softwarefreedom.org/resources/2009/Oracle-Sun-EC-opinion.pdf
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutron_bomb
[3] http://www.keionline.org/node/700

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Thiru Balasubramaniam
Geneva Representative
Knowledge Ecology International (KEI)
thiru@keionline.org


Tel: +41 22 791 6727
Mobile: +41 76 508 0997