DoJ Concern over Oracle / Sun: An Alternate Java Theory

Since the June 26 announcement that the U.S.-Democratic-party Department of Justice (DoJ) was taking Oracle's (ORCL) acquisition of Sun (JAVA) off the fast track because of a "narrow licensing issue" related to Java, I have posted my guess that it had something to do with the GNU General Public License (GPL) under which a lot of Sun software is currently licensed.

Dennis Gaughn of AMR is quoted in InformationWeek with the first viable alternative theory I've seen. (This as opposed to the hysterical or non-Java-related theories that have been thrown against the wall in the last two weeks.) Dennis' thought is that the DoJ is concerned that so many enterprise applications companies use Java and that enterprise applications is a market in which Oracle participates.

His idea is worth considering but I think not for a few reasons:

• The enterprise-application companies listed are no more dependent on Java than they are on Microsoft (MSFT) .NET.

• Sun participated in the enterprise applications market too if -- as I hope it would -- DoJ defined enterprise applications more broadly than AMR; DoJ would need to really look at all enterprise software.

• Dependence on the Java Enterprise Edition (JEE) is receding as newer distributed computing platforms such as Spring and Ruby on Rails gain traction; if by dependence AMR means the enterprise application supplier uses the Java programming language, that's not a big deal.

• If the issue involved tens of billions of dollars of enterprise software revenue as Dennis surmises, that would not be a "narrow licensing issue" as Oracle's outside counsel stated.

But boy if Dennis is right, and he has a good track record of being right, Oracle lawyers are already getting ready to go to the mattresses. This battle will make the Peoplesoft/DoJ litigation look like a first grader's Little League game. This would not be settled in the near term as Oracle hoped and that would have major IT investment implications.