Oracle-Sun Deal Hit by EC Objection

REDWOOD SHORES, Calif. (TheStreet) -- Oracle's(ORCL Quote) protracted acquisition of Sun(JAVA Quote) took another twist late Monday, when the European Commission issued a formal objection to the deal.

The E.C. statement, which was revealed in an Oracle SEC filing, was not completely out of the blue. European regulators have already voiced their concern about Oracle obtaining Sun's MySQL database technology, which has strong links to the open source community.

"The statement of objections sets out the commission's preliminary assessment regarding, and is limited to, the combination of Sun's open source MySQL database product with Oracle's enterprise database products," it said. The filing went on to discuss the deal's "potential negative effects on the competition in the market for database products." ...