My recollection is that similar cases in the US the litmus test for something being anti-competitive was that the concentration in the market had negative effects on the consumer. In most cases, those effects were seen in terms of higher prices for goods and services compared to what would be expected in a competitive market.  However, since clearly MySQL is a big part of this question.. one wonders what the standard will be for open source? Can open source ever be anti-competitive? Clearly there is not way to use the price standard as a means of proving this.

One thought would then be that instead of using license pricing as the basis, they could use maintenance pricing. However, if a regulator were to take that view, that would call into question virtually all software maintenance, except for the small portion that is based on open source offerings.

Because of these potentially wide ranging impacts this investigation certainly bears watching. In all likelihood, nothing will change. After all, there are several competitors out there with significant market share for databases, other than Oracle and MySQL. However, there is a small chance that we might have a major shift in the software business model.

Now, the idea that the Federal government favors open source is not strange, mainly because it gives them flexibility that is constrained by their procurement rules (an example) . And furthermore the idea that they might be modifying the rules to favor open source is not strange (although the source of this rumor was someone who makes money from open source software, so they have a vested interest in the outcome). However, the idea that the organizations whom we delegate the responsibility for our national security have a reason to believe that open source is more secure would be huge.

The team here at Gartner is already seeing a tremendous uptick in interest in the past few months. The majority of our middleware product related inquiries include a discussion of open source alternatives.  However, it is still usually the case that the strategic, mission critical projects use proprietary software, and the open source is used in a similar function for the rest of the portfolio. One of the main reasons for this is a lingering unease about the quality of open source products and the community development processes that create these products. If this rumor were true, that would go a long way toward dispelling that unease.

Whether or not this rumor is true, I expect to see a number of this type of event over the coming year that will substantially improve the way open source middleware (and open source products in general) are perceived.

(Gartner subscribers: check out the discussions of open source in government and open source in MOM