Is Europe's love of open source Microsoft's best friend?

Microsoft has often been pilloried by European governments and regulators who favor open source technology over proprietary software. But Europe's love of open source software may be one of Microsoft's biggest allies in the company's fight against Oracle.

The European Union has formally objected to Oracle's bid to buy Sun for $7.4 billion, and may end up blocking the sale. The reason: Sun has a unit that manages the open source MySQL database, and the Europeans worry that Oracle will kill it because they say it competes against Oracle's proprietary database software.

MySQL doesn't really compete against Oracle's often monster-sized databases, but it does compete directly against Microsoft's SQL Server. So if Oracle buys Sun, it's unlikely that the company would kill or starve MySQL. More likely, Oracle would pour more money into it, to challenge SQL Server.

So Microsoft is certainly very happy, at the moment, that the European Union is turning a gimlet eye on the Oracle-Sun deal. Microsoft likely considers the European Union action fair payback against Oracle, because Oracle in the past lobbied the European Union against Microsoft for the very reasons Oracle's deal may be blocked.

The New York Times sums up the irony of the situation this way:

The E.U. issued formal objections to the purchase on Monday, citing concerns that Oracle, a leading maker of corporate database software, could slow the growth of an important open-source database product, called MySQL, which is owned by Sun.

Oracle immediately poured scorn on the decision, saying it was based on "a profound misunderstanding" of the software market.

Ironically, Microsoft used to make much the same argument when it was defending itself in Brussels against complaints from industry groups in which Oracle played a leading role.

The deal isn't yet blocked. A hearing is scheduled for November 25, and a ruling is due on January 19. Here's one time Microsoft is silently urging on the European Union to stand up for open source.