Oracle is to meet European Union regulators on 10 December in
an attempt to win approval of the planned acquisition of Sun
Microsystems, according toreports.
The European Commission is delaying approval of the
$7.4bn deal because of concerns that the combination of Sun's
MySQL database product and Oracle's products could harm competition
in the database market.
Oracle rejected the claim that MySQL competes with its core
database software and said it will
"
vigorously oppose" the Commission's objections.
Oracle said the objections revealed a "profound misunderstanding
of both database competition and open source dynamics".
The EU last week pushed back its deadline for
reviewing the merger after granting a request from Oracle for more
time to provide a counter argument to concerns over
competition.
The US Department of Justice approved the deal in August, but
had raised concerns over the future of Sun's Java software and
programming language, not MySQL.
The UK Oracle User Group (UKOUG) has told the European
commissioner for competition, Neelie Kroes, that its membership
believes the future of both Java and MySQL will be secure with
Oracle.
"Oracle, in terms of strategy and commitment to open source,
will provide a secure future for Java," said Ronan Miles, chairman
of UKOUG.
"Oracle's record of preserving customer investments and support
of open standards would indicate as safe a future for MySQL as any
other 'owner'," he added.