Respected Free Software lawyer, Eben Moglen and the SFLC (Software Freedom Law Centre ) have sent a letter to the European Commission saying that it believes that the Commission has "underestimated the robustness the GPL has consistently demonstrated".

Larry Ellison, CEO of Oracle, has made it clear that he is not prepared to spin off Sun's MySQL business in an attempt to placate the European Commission investigation of competition issues with Oracle's planned acquisition of Sun.

Latest statistics from Black Duck Software show version 2 of the General Public License (GPLv2) sliding in popularity. Just under half of all the open source projects contained in the September 2009 statistics used the GPLv2.

Oracle claims that the European Commission's public policy against Oracle's takeover of MySQL runs counter to open source freedom and the growing database market.

"I became a fan of Eben Moglen when I saw this quote from him: “We also live in a world in which the right to tinker is under some very substantial threat. This is said to be because movie and record companies must eat. I will concede that they must eat. Though, like me, they should eat less.” This logic could be applied across the board in society! Computerworld recently featured an interview with Eben Moglen..."

Michael Widenius, the creator of the MySQL database, said he is turning his vocal campaign against Oracle's planned takeover of Sun Microsystems to China and Russia because the European Commission appears set to clear the deal.

Following on from MySQL founder Monty Widenius, Richard Stallman, president of the Free Software Foundation, and non-profit organisations Knowledge Ecology International (KEI) and the Open Rights Group (ORG) have advised European Commissioner for Competition Neelie Kroes not to grant approval for Oracle's takeover of MySQL.

"Reading Eben Moglen’s keynote address, “Freeing the Mind: Free Software and the Death of Proprietary Culture,” I felt a bit like Richard Stallman while he worked to replace UNIX with GNU: reaching the same destination but apprehensive about the other guy’s route. Moglen, a law professor and founder of the Software Freedom Law Center, discusses free software v. the behemoths of software largely in moral terms..."

Monty Widenius has posted a press release, urging Oracle to sell MySQL to a third party, and there is a link to the materials that he and Florian Mueller, who is working with him, provided to the EU Commission, which appears to have influenced it to delay approval. I've been reading all I can find on this topic, and I'd like to tell you why I think the community should support the Oracle deal.