Maureen O'Gara

The next hurdle that Oracle's unconditional acquisition of Sun and MySQL faces is clearing the formal meeting of the European Commission's so-called advisory committee, the 27 national regulators in the European Union, which is reportedly set for Monday afternoon January 11 in Brussels.

The European Commission supposedly drafted a blocking decision right after it issued its statement of objections to the acquisition so it's got the paperwork in hand in case its apparent deal with Oracle, memorialized in Oracle's 10 promises concerning MySQL, runs into heavy weather.

One must also assume that the EC has also drafted and circulated a clearance decision among the 27 by now.

Naturally MySQL creator Monty Widenius and his campaign to stop Oracle from acquiring the MySQL database will be trying to derail the assumed wave-through and agitate for at least some kind of conditional clearance. At press time Thursday night Widenius' "Save MySQL" petition had collected over 24,750 signatures so it's likely the campaign will be able to forward the EU regulators a petition with 30,000 names on it before the meeting.

If the campaign fails to make an impression on the EU regulators, it's promised to take its complaints to regulators in Russia, China, Japan and Brazil though they might fold in the face of European approval.

If Monday's meeting goes in Oracle's favor, it will be interesting to see if the EC waits until its January 27 deadline to publish its decision.

Widenius and company is then likely to play MySQL as strategically lost except for a limited space in which it may continue to play a role and even there maybe only for the next few years.