HELSINKI, FINLAND: The main rival to Sun's MySQL database has always been Oracle not Microsoft, the creator of MySQL said, as Europe nears an antitrust decision on Oracle's proposed $7 billion purchase of Sun.
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European Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes told Oracle last month it had failed to diminish worries that the purchase would hurt competition. The European Union has until January 19 to decide whether it will accept the deal.
Oracle wants a quick resolution because it says that Sun, the fourth-biggest maker of computer servers, is losing $100 million a month as rivals like Hewlett-Packard and IBM poach customers amid uncertainty about the closing of the deal.
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"The largest and the most common rival was Oracle. In every deal we were competing against Oracle," Michael "Monty" Widenius, the founder of MySQL, told Reuters in an interview.
Oracle and Sun declined to comment.
Widenius, one of the most respected developers of open-source software, left Sun earlier this year to set up his own small database firm Monty Program Ab, which competes head-to-head with MySQL.
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Sun bought MySQL for $1 billion just last year and Oracle has said it does not plan to divest MySQL.
The global database market is dominated by technology heavyweights Oracle, IBM and Microsoft.
