Richard Williams from Cross Research believes that Microsoft or even its ally SAP might attempt to buy Novell for approximately $2 billion

For the first time, we get to see what happens when a company that has built up an immense global business empire on the basis of its proprietary software takes over some of the most important open source projects around. Does it destroy them through mutual incomprehension? Or is it *changed* by them, moving towards their approaches?

If the deal is approved based on the fact that 'MySQL can be forked', that will be a big blow to open source Software.

Your editor wishes to take no position on whether Oracle's acquisition of Sun Microsystems should be allowed to proceed by the European Union. Such a decision certainly involves a number of antitrust considerations which go beyond the free software community. That said, some of the positions being taken around this acquisition shine an interesting light on how parts of our community work.

In order to appease European regulators, Oracle has made a number of commitments to the future of MySQL. According to a statement overnight (Australian time), Oracle has made a number of public commitments regarding MySQL in order to ease the concerns of European Union regulators investigating the proposed Oracle – Sun merger.

In many ways, MySQL embodies the ideals of the populist software movement known as open source, in which a program’s creator releases it to the world for free and legions of volunteers contribute improvements that are also freely shared.

The acquisition of Sun Microsystems by Oracle has become an ongoing saga, one that is reportedly seeing Sun hemorrhage cash at an alarming rate. The company's troubles have now found their way to the hallowed halls of Congress, where a majority of the U.S. Senate has entered the fray.