[debian-mysql] [Maria-discuss] MySQL's future in Debian and Ubuntu

[Michael Widenius]

Hi!

>>>>> "Henrik" == Henrik Ingo <henrik.ingo at avoinelama.fi> writes:

Henrik> On Thu, Feb 16, 2012 at 10:55 AM, Walter Heck <walterheck at gmail.com> wrote:
>> As for MariaDB, I like their much more community driven development
>> that seems less commercially driven,
Henrik> ...
>> At this point I think MariaDB would probably be a better match for
>> being in the main ubuntu/debian distro's as their whole ecosystem
>> seems to match better.

Henrik> Nuances, but I always like to separate the following:

Henrik> I wouldn't say that MariaDB is any more a community fork than Percona
Henrik> is. MariaDB is 100% controlled by Monty and his company, just like
Henrik> Percona Server is controlled and developed by Percona. Both companies
Henrik> are community friendly and open source minded. However, MariaDB has a
Henrik> strategy of being very inclusive while Percona has a strategy of not
Henrik> deviating too much from "upstream" MySQL. This is great, because
Henrik> including things like more storage engines in MariaDB exposes them to
Henrik> more users - so MariaDB does a great service to those engines in the
Henrik> MySQL ecosystem.

MariaDB is not controlled by me or Monty Program Ab. Anyone outside of
Monty Program Ab can get commits rights to MariaDB and there is
people outside of the company that has commit rights and has done
commits.  MariaDB is in this regard driven as most other open source
projects.

What it's true is that Monty Program Ab takes responsibility to
support a version for 5 years after it been declared stable and will
fix any security issues that is reported (even if there is no paying
customers for it).  This is however not the same thing as having 100%
control of it.

<cut>

Henrik> Otoh even MariaDB is not - unfortunately - even close at capturing the
Henrik> wholeness of what is out there in the MySQL ecosystem. I've already
Henrik> mentioned major things like MySQL 5.5 or Galera, otoh there are lots
Henrik> of smaller patches too like those from Anders Karlsson or TaoBao. So
Henrik> like I said, it is unfortunate we don't have a distribution that would
Henrik> really cover the whole community.

We are talking with Galera of adding it to MariaDB 5.5.  You know very
well about this as you where present when this was discussed only 2
weeks ago.  The main reason we haven't done it yet is that we want to
make the changes to the upper level less intrusive to make the code
it easier to manage long term and we are working with Galera to get
these changes done.

Henrik> Hence it is a bit of a paradox really: In theory MariaDB should
Henrik> satisfy more users, since it tries to include more features. In
Henrik> practice however I've repeatedly found that Percona has been (much)
Henrik> faster to include stuff that really matters, like MySQL 5.5,
Henrik> HandlerSocket and Galera. (HandlerSocket is also in the MariaDB 5.3
Henrik> Release Candidate now.)

How about microseconds, MyISAM new key cache, group commit, optimizer
enchancements, dynamic columns, thread pool etc.  MariaDB 5.3 and 5.5
has a LOT of critical features that Percona will never implement.

Handler socket was added in MariaDB about the same time Percona added
it, no big difference there.

Regards,
Monty