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Eben Moglen Sends Letter in Support of Oracle to EU Commission - GPL Works No Matter Who Owns the Copyrights

By Pamela Jones et al.

Eben Moglen has sent a letter to the EU Commission essentially in support of Oracle/Sun:

A top legal expert on open-source software has told European antitrust regulators holding up Oracle Corp's $7 billion purchase of Sun Microsystems that their analysis of the deal is partly flawed....

"The issues raised (by the commission) concerning the GPLv2 status of the MySQL code base do not warrant a conclusion that this transaction threatens significant anti-competitive consequences," Moglen told EU regulators in a Nov. 19 letter.

Moglen writes that the GPL was designed to be effective no matter who owns the copyrights. So the world's expert on the GPL has just told the Commission that the so-called analysis of the GPL by Florian Mueller and Monty Widenius, which apparently influenced the Commission heretofore, is full of beans.

A lot of people don't understand the GPL, of course. But between Eben Moglen and anyone else on the planet, if you do want to understand it, Moglen is who you would ask. Would you like to see the email that Mueller is sending around in response to this latest event? Hold your nose.

Full post as published by Groklaw on December 04, 2009 (boomark / email).