“Every new day of uncertainty is potentially very harmful to the various businesses of Sun, reducing competition in the market,” Mickos wrote. “A delay in the closing of this transaction is therefore only going to work against the respectable goal that you set out to achieve when launching the probe into this acquisition.”

Oracle, says Mickos, has far better reason to ramp-up Sun’s MySQL business than it does to harm it.

“Even if Oracle, for whatever reason, would have malicious or ignorant intent regarding MySQL (not that I think so), the positive and massive influence MySQL has on the DBMS market cannot be controlled by a single entity–not even by the owner of the MySQL assets. The users of MySQL exert a more powerful influence in the market than the owner does,” he continues. “Many expected Oracle to harm MySQL as far back as 2005, when they acquired the InnoDB storage engine that plays a crucial role for many MySQL customers. And yet Oracle increased their investment in InnoDB since that time, making MySQL a stronger player in the market.”

An interesting argument and one that appears to offer Mickos little personal gain. Now an entrepreneur in residence at Benchmark Capital, Mickos says he has no financial interest in the transaction. So why bother making it? “I couldn’t live with the fact that I’m not taking action,” Mickos told News.com.

Mickos’s letter will no doubt be welcomed by Oracle, which has repeatedly said it has only the best intentions for MySQL. “No, we’re not going to spin [MySQL] off,” Oracle CEO Larry Ellison told attendees of a Churchill Club event in Silicon Valley earlier this year. “We are keeping everything. We’re keeping tape. We’re keeping storage. We’re keeping x86 and SPARC. And we’re going to increase investment in all of them.”

“No, we’re not going to spin [MySQL] off,” Oracle CEO Larry Ellison told attendees of a Churchill Club event in Silicon Valley Monday evening. “We are keeping everything. We’re keeping tape. We’re keeping storage. We’re keeping x86 and SPARC. And we’re going to increase investment in all of them.”

In other words, technologists worried about Oracle’s (ORCL) intentions for MySQL and other Sun (JAVA) systems need to relax.

“Sun has fantastic technology. We think it’s got great microprocessor technology–it needs a little more investment, but we think it can be extremely competitive. It’s got the leading tape archival systems. We think the Open Storage on their new disk system is absolutely fantastic. Java speaks for itself. Solaris is overwhelmingly the best open-systems operating system on the planet….Sun has been a national treasure for the last couple of decades.”

And 80% would pay for a legal subscription-based music service that would allow them to discover, swap and recommend music.

Which, if true, illustrates the great disparity between the consumer and industry views of digital music. Because according to the Hertfordshire study, consumers–at least those in this particular age group–view digital music on the Internet as a sort of giant mixed tape to be explored and shared. They don’t have much of an emotional connection with it: “Respondents seem to attach a hierarchy of value to different formats of music, with streaming-on-demand the least valuable (though still valued); ownership of digital files somewhere in the middle; and ownership of the original physical CD the most valuable.”

The recording industry, of course, has failed to recognize that hierarchy. When, and if, it does, the study notes, it may finally succeed in monetizing that mixed-tape ethos that’s befuddled it for so long. “Survey responses suggest that respondents would continue to purchase CDs and go to gigs, even if they subscribed to a legitimate peer-to-peer file-sharing service,” the survey adds. “Fans want to support or pay tribute to their favorite artists and ownership of a digital music file does not necessarily do justice to their sense of devotion.”