[debian-mysql] MySQL medium/long term roadmap

[Monty Taylor]

On 10/08/2010 09:16 AM, Francesco P. Lovergine wrote:
> Hi mysql maints
> 
> I'm sorry to bother you with what is probably Just Another Silly Question, but
> I'm quite worried about the medium (if not long) term doom of MySQL in
> Debian. 
> 
> As you surely know, since Oracle acquisition, MySQL future has
> become more foggy than before. We have currently both Drizzle and
> MySQL/Community 5.1 installed. The MariaDB/OurDelta fork is a possible
> candidate (already with a RFP filled #565308) for a future
> almost-compatible community edition. There are currently more forks
> around than users probably...
> 
> Is there any currently defined roadmap about the current package? 
> Any current great idea? I know that we live uncertaint times, but
> having some common/shared intents could help. Something like:
> 
> - we will support 5.1 until its death.
> - we will support 5.? in the next future
> - you are on your own
> - we will move to OurDelta in the next future
> - we will move to xxx
> - install postgresql and forget My*

Certainly not the last one ... they don't even have a bug tracker! :)

Take this with a grain of salt, I'm a Drizzle developer who left right
MySQL just as Oracle was taking over, so I'm biased.

I don't see any yet for Debian to cease providing Oracle releases of
MySQL. Thus far they seem to be continuing to do good work and nothing
has gotten too borked (other than the half-working migration to cmake)

If at some point Oracle decides to stop shipping MySQL updates, or stops
responding to critical bug reports, then replacing upstream MySQL with
MariaDB/OurDelta is probably the next best bet. (I actually would
personally vote on using them as an upstream provider of MySQL anyway,
just because they're tracking upstream and are also likely to be more
responsive to bug reports, but I'm not sure there is _cause_ for this yet)

Of course, as you said, you also have Drizzle installed, and I just
uploaded a new version of that to the repo, so that's available- but I
don't think that means that anything drastic needs to happen in MySQL
land in Debian just yet.

My $0.02.

Monty