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Russians approve, um, Sunacle deal

Oligarch Ellison

I guess we all know what Larry Ellison thinks of the Federal Antimonopoly Service, the antitrust regulatory body in Russia.

While the European Union was credited with holding up the $7.4bn acquisition of Sun Microsystems by Oracle, the FAS was supposed to have a say in whether or not the deal went through too. But about one microsecond after European antitrust regulators gave the Oracle-Sun deal the nod on January 21, Oracle did all the paperwork and the deal was done.

It is with a certain amount of amusement that The Register can report, compliments of your man (and woman) in Moscow at Reuters, that the FAS last Friday said утвердительный to the Oracle deal. But, as Reuters reports, this was not without some conditions regarding the open source MySQL database that echoed the sentiments of the EU regulators. There was also a stern reminder that if Oracle does not comply, the FAS will consider this to be grounds to take Oracle to court and invalidate the deal.

What is the Russian for cheeky? (Made ya look.)

Anyway, FAS said Oracle has to continue to update MySQL with its open source licenses, and it cannot tie the distribution of the commercial license to services offered by Oracle for a fee. FAS says its requirements take effect for four years from the date that the Sunacle deal is done. So, does that mean March 19, 2014? Or January 21, 2014?

I think we all know the real answer. It doesn’t mean anything. ®

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