Where We Are

We can all agree that the MySQL ecosystem isn’t in great shape right now. Take a look at Julia’s blog post [Analyzing the Heartbeat of the MySQL Server: A Look at Repository Statistics], which confirms what many of us have felt: Oracle isn’t as committed to MySQL and its ecosystem as it once was. But here’s the thing—everyone has a different idea about what to do next. Some folks think we should wait and see what Oracle does, and not rock the boat. Others are ready to hard fork the whole thing and start fresh with a new name.

Here’s what we’re thinking: let’s start with the stuff we actually agree on. Get people working together on the things that matter, and then we can tackle the more complex issues down the road.

What We’re Proposing

We want to create a Group of MySQL Enthusiasts  – a non-profit where companies and individuals can jump in and contribute however they want.

Our mission: To grow the MySQL community as a vendor-neutral organization. We run conferences, support developers, fund projects, and build tools—keeping MySQL strong, secure, and open source for everyone who depends on it.

That means helping the community thrive AND helping all the commercial players in this space build their businesses.

To gather everyone’s feedback, we’re organizing two summits:

As much as we’d love to invite all users, space is limited, so these are invite-only events. Please submit your registration if you’d like to attend.

Questions to Resolve

At these summits, we’d like to hold a collective brainstorming session to answer a set of key questions:

How can we enable the community and commercial ecosystem around MySQL? Let’s help everyone succeed—from individual contributors to businesses building on MySQL.

How about organizing a vendor-neutral conference? We’re thinking of “The Conference for MySQL Community”—not a single vendor’s show, but a place for everyone to come together.

What if we supported local meetups and conferences? Similar to how the PostgreSQL community operates, we could help local groups get organized and stay connected.

Should we promote tools and developers? We could support the tools that make MySQL better and easier to use, including MySQL connectors and support in programming languages and development environments.

Do we need better community resources? We could set up spaces for people to coordinate and communicate—Slack channels, forums, whatever works.

Could we build a community portal? Think postgresql.org, but for MySQL. A place where you can find everything: service providers, tools, extensions, cloud services and other resources.

What’s our code maintenance strategy? This is the big one, and honestly, we can figure it out as we go. Maybe Oracle lets us help contribute. Maybe we maintain a tracking fork. Or maybe we end up doing a hard fork with a new name. We’ll cross that bridge when we get there.

How do we handle bugs and security concerns? Can we enable a public bug database (where content isn’t restricted by Oracle) and establish a security process where all stakeholders are informed and can ensure security for their customers?

If you have more questions, submit them in the comments, or you can reach me at https://www.linkedin.com/in/vadimtk/

 

Let’s connect and discuss how we should move forward!

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Stefan

Isn’t this what MariaDB is all about?

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Vadim Tkachenko

While MariaDB and MySQL started from the same code, they are now very different products. Over the past ten years, each has gone its own way. MariaDB has added features that MySQL doesn’t have, and MySQL has added features that MariaDB doesn’t support. They handle replication differently. They have different storage engines. Even some SQL commands work differently between the two.
If you’re running MySQL 8.0 or 8.4 today, you can’t simply swap in MariaDB and expect everything to work the same way. Your applications may need changes. Your operations team will need to learn new tools and behaviors. Some features you depend on may not exist or may work differently.
For these reasons, we don’t see MariaDB as a replacement for MySQL. They are two separate products that serve different needs

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Mark Tomandl

I’ve been experiencing the largely downward trajectory in MySQL-land for the last few years and the explosive growth on the PostgreSQL side. At my work we’ve been deprecating more projects that use MySQL than we’ve been starting new ones while Postgres has been taking more and more of the DB pie.
I came into managing databases 15 years ago with MySQL so I have quite a lot of muscle memory that’s different than PostgreSQL. I appreciate that PostgreSQL has a lot of cool stuff it can do, but darn it I just really like MySQL.
I love that you’re starting this conversation, let’s see where we can take this!

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ting

As a deep user of MySQL, I’m very happy to see such an initiative and look forward to it.

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