There have been several reports (1,2,3) describing Percona’s stance regarding the MariaDB Foundation that are not totally accurate so I though it would be worth it to describe where we stand on this and related matters.
First, let me say the creation of theMariaDB Foundation is a good thing for the MariaDB Community and I’m very pleased to be in the group of those select people Monty chose to brief and seek feedback from before it was announced publicly. A Foundation is a form of governance for many mature open source projects, such as Apache Software Foundation, Linux Foundation or FreeBSD Foundation. A Foundation structure shows to the world there is a non-profit organization behind the project, with the success of the project as its mission, which can streamline the process of sponsorships and donations. A Foundation can also own trademarks,domain names and other IP to help level the playing field for community participants as well as define the governance – the decision making process about the project’s future. MariaDB Foundation just has been announced and we are likely to learn a lot more about how exactly it will operate during the next few weeks.
Second, on Percona’s Participation in the MariaDB Foundation – contrary to the claims of those articles – Percona is currently not the co-founder or a member of the MariaDB Foundation. Over the years our approach have always been to limit involvement in various organizations and take a stand on the issues and projects the way we believe is right, not as our organizational membership might require.
Third comes to the question of when and how Percona Supports MariaDB. We support all variants and flavors of “MySQL” – Oracle MySQL, MariaDB, Drizzle, Percona Server, Amazon RDS – helping our customers to be successful with whatever choices they have made. We respect their right of choice and we think there is great innovation happening in all those MySQL flavors. In my keynote address at Percona Live London I praised Oracle for great improvements in Innodb Scalability, Transparency and Replication in the forthcoming MySQL 5.6 release and MariaDB for pushing boundaries with the most advanced optimizer in MySQL space as well as leading the way in integrating with NoSQL solutions with its Cassandra Storage Engine. I believe this competitive innovation is what is moving “MySQL” on a very fast pace and ensures it remains the best data management technology for modern applications. We recommend MariaDB in the cases where it is fit best to solve the customer issues, same as we do with other technologies. Fred for example recently blogged on using MariaDB multi source replication in the migration project he was handling.
Fourth comes the question about what it means for Percona Server. We continue to be committed to developing our own flavor of MySQL: Percona Server. Our goals for this project are different than those for MariaDB. Our focus is providing a solution for the most demanding applications, empowering users to get the best performance and lowest downtime possible. We focus on compatibility with Oracle MySQL, High Quality, and small but High Value changes focused on the most pressing problems we observe in the demanding environments our customers are running. There is overlap in features and idea exchange between the Percona and MariaDB development teams. MariaDB, for example, includes the XtraDB storage engine – our enhanced variant of Innodb. Percona Server includes Group Commit code from MariaDB. In the future we will continue to pick the best innovations which match our project goals for inclusion in Percona Server and other Percona software, wherever in the MySQL Ecosystem they come from.
Finally I wanted to state Percona’s relation with the MySQL Community and the MySQL Ecosystem. We’re not here to pick sides or get involved in politics. We’re here to make our customers successful running MySQL and, along the way, to contribute to the MySQL ecosystem with our knowledge, software and organizational resources. We recommend to our customers the solutions which meet their needs to the best of our opinion. We have spent tens of man-years building Percona software, including Percona Server, Percona XtraDB Cluster, Percona XtraBackup, and Percona Toolkit, all of which are available as Open Source. We have spent countless hours organizing the Percona Live series of MySQL conferences, which are very inclusive and open for everyone in the MySQL community. The Percona Live Conference and Expo 2013 will include a number of presentations about MySQL, Percona Server, and MariaDB. We also have been open in supporting the events of other organizations including MySQL Connect organized by Oracle in September 2012.
We’re happy to be here and we see an exciting future for the MySQL-Powered community!
Good article, Peter.
Peter,
Great post, I agree with your comments and personally I welcome the position that Percona is taking. The common goal is to have a better MySQL and a strong community of enthusiasts who can contribute to it. Time will tell, but personally I am very optimistic.
Thanks!
-ivan
Patrick, Ivan,
Thank you for your support !