A Bright Future for MySQL?

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MySQL users listened intently Tuesday, April 13 at O'Reilly's MySQL to Edward Screven, Oracle's chief corporate architect, while he announced Oracle's grand plan for MySQL. What they heard was that Oracle is interested in MySQL, will invest in it and nothing should change for the community version of MySQL. In essence, Oracle will continue on the same path with the commercial and community versions of MySQL just as MySQL AB and Sun did.

Uh huh. And I have some lovely beach front property in Arizona that I'd love to sell you.

It isn't that I don't believe that Oracle will continue to support the MySQL Community version, it's that I don't think they'll continue to support it at the same level as they do the commercial version. The Oracle database doesn't need community support so why should MySQL?

If you love MySQL but also don't trust what's going on with it and it's still uncertain future, try or Drizzle.

MariaDB is Monty Widenius' forked MySQL database product. Drizzle, like MariaDB, is a forked MySQL database and the developers are former MySQL employees. Widenius was the founder of MySQL AB.

The fallout from Oracle's purchase and continued support of MySQL is this: If you want to continue to use MySQL, you'll pay Oracle for the privilege.

I just have the feeling that the privilege isn't going to be worth the price or hassle from Oracle.

What do you think of the announcement and Oracle's ownership of MySQL?

Dani AI

Generated

As noted back in 2010, skepticism about Oracle’s stewardship was reasonable — the safe choice then was hedging bets. What actually happened: Oracle kept MySQL alive and invested heavily in it, shipping several major modern releases (notably the 8.x line) that added window functions, CTEs, improved JSON and UTF8MB4 support and other enterprise features. Oracle also pushed MySQL into cloud‑native offerings (HeatWave and related services). (infoworld.com)

The community alternatives matured. MariaDB (founded by original MySQL devs) formed a foundation and now publishes long‑term series (10.11 and friends) and active release notes; many major Linux distributions switched their default from MySQL to MariaDB (Fedora, Debian and others), and managed clouds offer MariaDB builds. That makes MariaDB a practical, well‑supported community choice today — but note it has diverged in places from Oracle MySQL, so “drop‑in” is not guaranteed for every new MySQL feature. (en.wikipedia.org)

Drizzle — the lightweight fork some recommended — never gained traction and the project was wound down; by contrast Percona Server became a long‑lived, drop‑in alternative with performance and observability extensions that many enterprises use. (en.wikipedia.org)

Practical takeaway: pick by requirements, not politics. For the newest MySQL features and Oracle cloud integrations choose Oracle MySQL; for community governance and distro friendliness choose MariaDB; for maximum compatibility plus performance/tooling consider Percona. Before switching, inventory the features your apps use (JSON semantics, GTID/replication modes, data‑dictionary behavior, storage engines), run full test migrations and compatibility checks, and plan backups and rollback paths. Read the migration/compatibility notes from MariaDB/Percona before you act. (infoworld.com)

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