Here’s what’s made me antsy as a Java blogger over the past few months: the fate of the technology has hinged on the EU’s approval (or disapproval) of the Sun-Oracle merger; yet the EU gripe that’s held the whole thing up is centered on MySQL. I care nothing for MySQL! Well, that’s not really true, but I’m not writing a MySQL blog, darn it.Anyway, I promise I am going to get to Java in a minute, but let me turn your attention to this Internet.com story about how a bunch of U.S. Senators wrote a sure-to-be-ineffectual letter to the EU explaining that Sun is in a state of advanced collapse so maybe hurry up with the approval process? The article quotes Martin Reynolds, and analyst who some interesting points (I know, right?) about the difference between EU and U.S. merger philosophy: the U.S. tends to study whether a merger will harm consumers, while the EU looks to see if it will harm other firms in the same market segment as the newly merged company (particularly if those firms are European). Thus the drama over MySQL, which is a European division of Sun, and which could be left to wither on the vine if Oracle decides it will cannibalize higher-end database sales.But Reynolds suggests another, even more worrying scenario for the merger: he says the EU may turn its attention to the Java angle in the merger at the behest of SAP, Oracle’s German-based nemesis, which also has a significant stake in the future of Java. This, then, was the real purpose of SAP’s melodramatic call for Java freedom earlier this month: it was a cry to catch the EU’s attention to the matter. And while Oracle could, conceivably, spin off MySQL without harming the overall rationale for the merger with Sun, Java is a very different story. Technology Industry