We’ve been talking all this time about the Sun-Oracle merger as if it’s a done deal, but the US government has the right and the responsibility to examine proposed combinations to make sure they don’t violate anti-trust law, and the Obama Administration is rumored to be stricter on this point than the Bush Administration was. Thus, it was not entirely unexpected that Department of Justice put the brakes on the transaction last week. This does not by any means indicate that the merger won’t go through, but it does mean that the administration isn’t willing to fast-track the deal, and wants to take a closer look at the implications.What’s interesting from our perspective is exactly what the DoJ was keen to gather more information about. According to one of Oracle’s attorneys, “All that’s left is one narrow issue about the way rights to Java are licensed that is never going to get in the way of the deal.” Despite the bravado contained in the second half of that sentence, it’s intriguing to say the least that the US government is so concerned about Java licensing. Stephen Colbourne thinks that the feds might be interested in the whole Sun-Apache dispute. While it’s certainly possible, and I do think this is an important issue, it’s also a fairly obscure one that even the Java community at large seems largely ignorant about. It may be that the DoJ’s concerns are broader, that they’re worried about a Oracle being in charge of the JCP, which will determine the fate of products being put out by many of Oracle’s competitors. An antitrust lawyer quoted by the Wall Street Journal notes that “Often in these cases, the acquirer agrees to certain conditions or to divest some assets”; could Oracle be required to spin off the JCP as an independent foundation? Either way, it’s intriguing that someone in the federal bureaucracy knows how important software licensing is. Technology Industry