EU:1 , US: 0

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/04/technology/companies/04oracle.html

Sadly enough, it appears the EU has a better read on the Sun/Oracle merger than our own Justice Department.

From the NY Times in the link above:

European regulators threw up a roadblock Thursday to the proposed takeover of Sun Microsystems by the software company Oracle, indicating that the combination could squelch the growth of a popular, free corporate database software owned by Sun.

The decision by the European Commission to extend its investigation into the deal, worth $7.4 million, is especially sensitive because the U.S. Department of Justice has already approved the merger. Regulators in the United States questioned Oracle’s market power in some areas of its business but raised fewer concerns than the Europeans about open-source software.

Open-source software is far more popular in Europe than here in the US in the corporate world but many of the developers I know throughout Silicon Valley (and other high-tech areas in the US) live and breathe via Open Source on a daily basis. A truly frightening study into how much development -- be it commercial, proprietary, etc. -- takes place on Open Source platforms, using Open Source etc. would likely show Open Source's popularity within the development community (what Wall Street calls the innovators and future dot-com/IPOs) is just as high as in Europe's more commercial/mainstream areas.

The DOJ seems to have missed the boat on this one, because a Sun/Oracle merger will have a strong and likely negative impact on development communities, here at home as well as abroad. The difference is, the EU recognizes the threat and is looking closer to assess the risks. If our government were truly interested in protecting the national IP (read that as intellectual property or innovative potential, they are transitive here), the Sun/Oracle deal would have garnered much more scrutiny.