There is more than new versions and acquisitions happening in the MySQL world. A vendor-neutral consortium, Open Database Alliance, has been formed to become a hub for all activity related to MySQL. The open source community has been anxious about future of MySQL since Oracle’s aquisition of Sun was announced. And this, perhaps, is one of the better directions it can go in. I liken it to foundations around Linux, where various vendors collaborate to bring out a better quality product.
However, the product being talked about here is not MySQL, but MariaDB, a fork of MySQL. The intent is to make MariaDB work the same as MySQL. If the aim is to help people switch to this fork as against MySQL itself, MariaDB has to be as close as a drop-in replacement to MySQL.
It will be great if the alliance explicitly addresses the MySQL community. I think this is a good step which is making most of the open source benefits.
May 15th, 2009 at 3:23 am
This makes me glad I chose to align my projects with PostgreSQL a long time ago
I wish them well on MariaDB though… I’d hate to see MySQL flounder under Oracle’s care.