Earlier this week the US Department of Justice approved the Sun-Oracle merger — which would be momentous news, except that, in this multinational world, that wasn’t the only approval required to make the deal happen. The companies must now wait on the announcement from the European Commission, led in this area by European Commissioner for Competition Neelie Kroes (aka “Steelie Neelie”). The Commission will announce on September 3 whether it will approve the merger or study it for another three months.The US DOJ had been reportedly been quite interested in Java licensing issues, and it would be interesting to know what, if anything, Oracle told them to put their mind at ease. While there’s hard evidence on what specific area would be most worrying to European regulators, I’ve heard scuttlebutt that their ire could be raised by the number one database maker getting control of MySQL (which is in origin a European product). For Java watchers, it’s an interesting experience having something incredibly important held up by a dispute that doesn’t even involve you. Technology Industry