Talk:MariaDB

MariaDB and JSON
Why it is written that MariaDB is "not 100% compatible" with JSON (on "Third-party software")? If I am not mistaken, MariaDB is compatible but added quite a lot in addition. Therefore, it seems the pharsing might be misleading. 2A10:800A:8683:0:2D77:971D:D7B6:DCD0 (talk) 14:41, 4 September 2023 (UTC)

community-developed branch
"MariaDB is a community-developed branch of the MySQL database, the impetus being the community maintenance of its free status under GPL, as opposed to any uncertainty of MySQL license status under its current ownership by Oracle."

This doesn't sound right to me. MariaDB began after Sun acquired MySQL but *before* Oracle acquired Sun, I believe.


 * The author is right: the fork started immediatly after the announcement of the acquisition of Sun (and MySQL) by Oracle. But what you wrote is almost correct too: Widenius left Sun BEFORE the announcement of the acquisition - he worked as a consulent, developing the Maria (now called Aria) Storage Engine. However, most of the MariaDB developers (who formerly were MySQL core developers) joint MariaDB after the announcement of the acquisition. You can verify these information searching on Monty's blog, Brian Aker's blog and other developers' blogs.

Monty originally stated on his blog that it was a branch, not a fork. But this was before Oracle. Later, he notes that it became a "full fork". So I believe fork would be more accurate than branch. — Preceding unsigned comment added by (Not that) Linus (talk • contribs) 20:30, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

Third Party Softwares

I think that the section "Third Party Softwares" should not be there. Only 2 softwares are listed, but possibly every software written for MySQL could be there - but then they should be listed on other forks' pages, too. We could simply write that MariaDB is compatible with MySQL, except that it doesn't support NDB and IBMBD2 storage engines. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 151.57.201.30 (talk) 14:35, 30 September 2010 (UTC)
 * I agree Juhoeemeli (talk) 08:08, 5 December 2012 (UTC)


 * Applications listing
 * "The following applications officially support MariaDB:" at least is an overstatement. Source link takes one to Works With MariaDB site where it says: "Every project we know of which works with MySQL also works with MariaDB. This page is just to point out projects which officially support MariaDB (e.g. by mentioning MariaDB in their documentation or setup instructions)." So this information comes from developers of MariaDB and not the developers of software mentioned. At least in case of MediaWiki this is incorrect since they specifically say: "(*) – Even though it may not be officially supported yet, MariaDB, a GPL fork of the MySQL code by Monty Widenius, the founder of MySQL, is an alternative and can also be used by MediaWiki." I don't know how to fix this other than by removing such list all together. Juhoeemeli (talk) 08:08, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

sentence fragment
Second paragraph, first sentence: "The intent also being to maintain high fidelity with MySQL, ensuring a 'drop-in' replacement capability with library binary equivalency and exacting matching with MySQL APIs and commands." This sentence does not represent a complete thought. It may have initially been a continuation of the introduction sentence, later split off into its own paragraph, but it can't stand on its own as a sentence. Here are a few options that would work better, without altering the words used: I'll let someone else decide how best to word this for best readability. -fysx — Preceding unsigned comment added by 63.248.142.244 (talk) 04:02, 17 January 2013 (UTC)
 * "The intent of the MariaDB project is also to maintain high fidelity with MySQL..."
 * "The intent of the project is also to..."
 * "Maintaining high fidelity with MySQL is also the intent of the project, ensuring..."

billion dollars or 16 million euros?
It says in this article that MySQL AB was sold for a billion dollars, but on the Full Monty page it says he made 16 million euros capital gains... where did the rest of that money go? 108.14.123.172 (talk) 19:53, 10 June 2013 (UTC)


 * Monty was not the only shareholder at the time of the sale. Ajdonnison (talk) 11:49, 14 August 2014 (UTC)

How to pronounce 'MariaDB'?
Does anybody have any guidance on this? Presumably it's "ma-ree-ah" but I've heard some people pronounce it "mu-riy-ah". Mrstonky (talk) 11:11, 28 June 2013 (UTC)


 * It is pronounced "ma-ree-ah" within MariaDB (both the corporation and the foundation) Ajdonnison (talk) 06:02, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

But where is the accent/emphasis? I have heard both "ma-REE-ah" and "MA-ree-ah" Sdp61 (talk) 18:43, 11 May 2016 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure it would be "ma-REE-ah", since everyone I know named Maria pronounces it that way (in the United States). XC Fan (talk) 21:39, 22 November 2016 (UTC)

Sort of "I just met a DB called Maria..." — Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.6.176.27 (talk) 06:14, 30 January 2019 (UTC)

XAMPP
XAMPP is now using MariaDB: https://www.apachefriends.org/blog/new_xampp_20151019.html --Benimation (talk) 15:40, 5 November 2015 (UTC)

distro support
It would be helpful for the article to document Linux distros (and other software distributions) that default to including MariaDB. For example, the article currently includes this sentence, which was helpful: "On this basis, Fedora developers replaced MySQL with MariaDB in Fedora 19, out of concerns that Oracle is making MySQL a more closed software project." as was it's reference: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/ReplaceMySQLwithMariaDB I am adding information about RHEL 7 adoption. I'd appreciate it if users of other distros/operating systems could include information about those alternatives. I think this information is not only relevant and directly informative, but also has collateral value, such as settling the issue of notability (raised in 2013). 67.162.21.248 (talk) 20:31, 18 April 2016 (UTC)

MariaDB -> MariaDB Server
MariaDB is an ambiguous term. Most of this article refers to MariaDB Server which is governed by the MariaDB Foundation and is one of the many products that MariaDB Corporation employees work on. There is also MariaDB MaxScale, MariaDB ColumnStore and so on. Maybe this page needs to be split, but really, there is no "MariaDB" per se. We need to get the terms right since this is encyclopedic content.
 * I agree with this - MariaDB is a proprietary trademark and used as a prefix for a number of projects, including MariaDB MaxScale. See http://www.infoworld.com/article/3109213/open-source-tools/open-source-uproar-as-mariadb-goes-commercial.html ClareTheSharer (talk) 18:11, 7 February 2017 (UTC)
 * This has become even more divergent in the past years in my opinion. Here are my suggestions: 1. In "MariaDB", introduce a new section for "MariaDB Corporation" (the section for "MariaDB Foundation" already exists) 2. Create a new full article for "MariaDB Corporation", somewhat modeled after "MySQL AB" as that has expanded greatly 3. Create a new full article and page for "MariaDB Foundation" as that has also diverged greatly, somewhat modeled after "Linux Foundation" (but much shorter) 4. Redirect "MariaDB Server" as a synonym for "MariaDB" Any input on any of the four suggestions? Any further wishes? I'm happy to take this on (Dups - Duleepa Wijayawardhana - former MySQL AB employee, now CTO/user of MariaDB at Supermetrics). Garion belgarath (talk) 11:23, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Agree with the proposals. Greenman (talk) 14:39, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Broadly agree, but MariaDB Foundation is very much a marketing construct staffed from MariaDB Corporation and should be a subsection of a page about the company. ClareTheSharer (talk) 11:51, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
 * This is not correct, see MariaDB Foundation board and MariaDB Foundation staff. Greenman (talk) 14:39, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Given the Foundation's CEO, CTO and Chief of Staff have clear, public conflicts of interest related to the Corporation, in what way would you say that was incorrect? Do you have an interest to declare? ClareTheSharer (talk) 15:24, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
 * You can find out anything you want to know about me via my user page. You are claiming different things. First that the Foundation is a 'marketing construct', and secondly that there are 'clear, public conflicts of interest'. I'm not sure those are a good basis for not creating (or deleting) an article, but I have provided sources, and it would be helpful for others following if you did the same. Greenman (talk) 20:46, 23 June 2019 (UTC)

Community developed
I am going to challenge that introduction assertion based on the following references:
 * The main source of income for the MariaDB Foundation seems to be corporate sponsors: https://mariadb.org/about/supporters/ https://mariadb.org/donate/individual-sponsors/
 * Analysis of the contributor list seems to have almost exclusively SkySQL/MariaDB Corporation and Foundation employees https://www.flamingspork.com/blog/2013/08/09/who-works-on-mariadb-and-mysql/ https://www.flamingspork.com/blog/2013/08/14/who-is-working-on-mariadb-10-0/ which in turn seems to be less than merges of Oracle-implemented features
 * The practical totality of the board seems to be corporate sponsors https://mariadb.org/about/governance/
 * I cannot find references with 3rd party research stating that the code is mainly community-based

I would propose something like shifting the description to something like "non-profit-driven" or "non-oracle-driven" or "foundation-driven" or something along the lines that it is an alternative to and Oracle-driven project, but I think community-driven is a falsehood. A complete and more accurate description could be done at large with all nuances at a later time on a governance paragraph. I think community-developed was an initial intention, but I think in the latest years there has been a shift towards corporate sponsors taking charge for the development process, and as such, the article should be updated to reflect the current reality. Being non-community driven is not a problem, there are many successful open-source projects that are corporate-driven.

As some of that could be controversial, I am asking for discussion first, will change at some point if my assertion is not challenged.

Disclaimers: I am personally one of the largest MariaDB individual donors, and so is my current employer. --jynus (talk) 14:19, 9 July 2017 (UTC)
 * I am an employee of the MariaDB Foundation, so will not participate in the decision-making, but I will participate in the discussion. To comment on your points
 * The income of the MariaDB Foundation and composition of its board doesn't have a direct relationship on who develops MariaDB.
 * The two sources you listed for contributors are very out-of-date. Rather look at the current Github figures: https://github.com/MariaDB/server/graphs/contributors - this page is also not easy to read, as it doesn't reflect current activity, and is ordered by number of commits rather than actual code contributions, but looking at more recent contributions, the vast majority are from MariaDB Corporation employees, followed by MariaDB Foundation employees (this includes code from outside individuals and companies where the final merge was done by a Foundation employee), followed by other companies and individuals.
 * "The term "community" is ambiguous, and terms such as "non-oracle-driven" are confusing, so it makes sense to simply list who is involved in development, similar to how its done in the PostgreSQL article. That article states "PostgreSQL is developed by the PostgreSQL Global Development Group, a diverse group of many companies and individual contributors." A similar one in this instance could be "MariaDB is developed by the MariaDB Corporation, the MariaDB Foundation, and a diverse group of many companies and individual contributors." Greenman (talk) 20:24, 11 July 2017 (UTC)


 * I don't disagree at all that MariaDB Corporation employees and MariaDB Foundation employees are the main code contributors (developers). I would like you to demonstrate the part of the " diverse group of many companies and individual contributors". If paying for the development, is something that is not considered as "development", then looking at the link you refer, I would say something like MariaDB is developed by Oracle, Percona, and other companies- as it seems to me that by size most commits come from Oracle and Percona (Tokutek) employees- and I hope you consider that as crazy (and not being again representative of a "community"- as importing commits is not the same as community of developers. I have some sources that say that MariaDB is not a community effort- your own Foundation says so:
 * "I wanted here to to share my thoughts on how this change affects the MariaDB community."
 * "The short version: As the MariaDB Corporation is the main driving force behind the development of the MariaDB server and the biggest support provider for it, it makes sense to give it a name that clearly communicates this fact. The name change doesn’t of course stop the company to continue it’s excellent support for MySQL." -- https://mariadb.org/why-skysql-becoming-mariadb-corporation-will-be-good-for-the-mariadb-foundation/
 * If that has change lately, we can add that to the history section, but that being true for some time merits retiring it from the entry.
 * My proposal:
 * "MariaDB is a fork of the MySQL relational database management system. Development is led by the non-profit MariaDB Foundation and the MariaDB Corporation [ref previous note]" [note: put them in order of importance/contribution, I do not know which one is more important or if that changed over the time, it can be clarified- but do not add ambiguous "community" words]. "Its creation was driven by concerns [of somone, say who] over the acquisition of MySQL by Oracle Corporation." Maybe a second paragraph expanding Monty's original vision and current funded/users?. And a third indicating the compatibility -5.5 very similar, from 10 being a hard fork, containing new stuff that is not available on MySQL, but not all MySQL stuff. [stylistic and grammar should be better, this is just a rough idea].
 * I do not intend to hide some of the things here, like the required shared contribution, or the details of the concerns, or who created it initially, or anythings else, but the entry should be as dry and neutral as possible, with no judgements or ambiguities, "this are the facts, this is why it is famous", leaving the drama, both good and bad for the details. I do not think some of those current "facts" are relevant for an introduction. Criticisms both good and bad-if any- should be done later- the article's entry should answer the basic questions: what is it? What is the difference with MySQL? Who makes it? Why was it created? Who created it? When?
 * Wishes and intentions should not be mixed with facts "we intend this to be a community effort" is ok as a quote from a third pary, but it should not be confused by the fact that a) there is a limited amount of committers that are not the foundation, the corporation, imports from elsewhere b) It is founded mostly by large corporate sponsors (which is not a problem, but is not my definition of community). Look at Wikipedia's article- for me, there could be not a better definition of a community project than that, but it is not defined as a collaborative/community effort, despite that in that case a) most of the fundings come from small individual donors b) all most all of its content is not created by WMF employees. Even Debian is "packaged by a group of individuals". If those are not community-developed, MariaDB is even less. I know articles should not be compared between them, but my main concern is that this was an initially loaded article, that now should be much dryier and serious in tone. I redid the summary for the MySQL article (cannot be resposible for the current state) and I tried to be as much dry as possible, while being fair. An while I appreciate your contributions, I do not like both MySQL and MariaDB community (pun intended) managers, "protecting" their articles. --jynus (talk) 21:07, 25 July 2017 (UTC)
 * Yes, agree, community is ambiguous as mentioned above. Obviously when looking at the contributors, recent development is important, not who contributed before the fork. Perhaps this blog post will help clarify the numbers of individual contributors, see https://mariadb.org/mariadb-contributions-first-half-2017/ for numbers in the last 6 months. Also https://mariadb.com/kb/en/mariadb/log-of-mariadb-contributions/ gives an incomplete list of contributors. As per your proposed sentence, the majority are from the Corporation, as the Foundation's role is not to employ developers (though it does have some), but to facilitate contributions from the community (in the looser sense of anyone interested). So the Corporation should go first. It is not accurate to limit the developers to those two entities though. As you've highlighted the word "many" as problematic and ambiguous, it would be accurate then to simply state "MariaDB is developed by the MariaDB Corporation, the MariaDB Foundation, and a diverse group of companies and individual contributors." (if you feel "diverse" is equally ambiguous, it can be left out too.) As for the comment about protecting the article, will WP:AGF and assume that that comment is not directed here. I also can't see any edits by you on the MySQL article either, but they were either anonymous or further back than I looked, so can't see what if anything was being referred to there. Otherwise, the changes sound neutral and the article could do with some improvement, so be WP:BOLD and go ahead. Greenman (talk) 14:54, 1 August 2017 (UTC)
 * I am assuming good faith, I said you were doing a great job of keeping the article up to date- I had cases in which other community managers didn't want to keep the neutrality of an article. However, one has to be very skeptic about potential WP:COI and extremely transparent about that. I think we should avoid qualifiers like "many", or "diverse", and stick to proovable facts on the entry description. I wonder if we should avoid the word fork at the beginning, for two reasons too technical, and many nuances there. So something like (again, a draft):
 * MariaDB is an open source relational database management system derived from MySQL. Development is led by the MariaDB Corporation, the MariaDB Foundation and a group of other companies and individuals [reference here]. The MariaDB projects was created (by whom, Monty alone? someone else?) because of concerns over the acquisition of MySQL by Oracle Corporation. MariaDB, up to version 5.5 was fully compatible with MySQL; Since 10.1, it maintains protocol compatibility with MySQL (that means, it can be used with the same clients and libaries that MySQL), but it includes additional new features not found on MySQL, while it doesn't implement some of the features from the latest Oracle MySQL versions" [basically I am paraphrasing the maria db documentation and defining a fork here]. I am open for suggestions -if you think this makes mariadb look too good or too bad -I am trying to be fair here and noting both positive and negative points without judgement while being informative for readers of the page "what is mariadb? What is the difference with mysql? etc.", but I may be cramming too much information. jynus (talk) 18:29, 15 August 2017 (UTC)
 * While that was a correct description once, today MariaDB is simply a trademark owned by the MariaDB Coprporation and used only when qualified by additional terms. Some of those uses are open source and at least one of them is not. Any descriptive sentence will need to explain that. ClareTheSharer (talk) 00:31, 16 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Maybe as you said above s/MariaDB/MariaDB Server/ ? --jynus (talk) 13:36, 16 August 2017 (UTC)
 * For the whole article? Maybe, but WP probably needs a MariaDB Corporation article more than that, with a subsection for MariaDB Server, and space for their corporate PR to ghost in everything else inclusing the proprietary MariaDB activities. That's probably better than pretending "MariaDB" is somehow an indicator of open-source-ness. ClareTheSharer (talk) 15:14, 16 August 2017 (UTC)
 * By WP:COMMONNAME, MariaDB should refer to the database server, not the trademark or Corporation. But it's fine and more accurate to specify MariaDB Server where needed. jynus, your suggestions above seem generally fine. As for a separate MariaDB Corporation article, that's fine too, but the Corporation is certainly not more notable than the server, so disagree with the suggestion of it as the main article and server as a subsection. If there's not enough for a Corporation article, can be added as a subsection here, as with the Foundation. Greenman (talk) 20:45, 16 August 2017 (UTC)
 * That read of WP:COMMONNAME would have held before the Corporation acquired the trademark, but after that event WP:NAMECHANGES suggests giving extra weight to more recent sources and thus every appearance of "MariaDB" needs to be qualified. The unqualified trademark no longer refers to any single thing. At a minimum that suggests renaming this article "MariaDB Server". ClareTheSharer (talk) 23:18, 16 August 2017 (UTC)

Sun, Not Oracle
No. "Due to concerns over its acquisition by Oracle Corporation" is nonsense. The article doesn't even say that. It states that Widenius forked MySQL immediately after the Sun acquisition. That's about a year and a half before Oracle acquired Sun. Widenius was indeed concerned to preserve the project's openness, but he was thinking of Sun, which also had an anti-OS reputation. That's the official story, anyway. In fact, Widenius and other MySQL employees were antagonized by Sun's "not invented here" culture, and bailed after about a year — the usual outcome for Sun acquisitions. I speak with some authority, since I was working at Sun at the time. Isaac Rabinovitch (talk) 20:08, 4 November 2018 (UTC)
 * You are misreading the source. "Immediately after the Sun acquisition [by Oracle was announced]". Greenman (talk) 07:31, 31 December 2018 (UTC)

Same as MySQL
Saw a claim on a article that MariaDB is the same as  MySQL  is that true? 🌸 1.Ayana 🌸 (talk) 10:48, 28 August 2020 (UTC)

MariaDB either has no equivalent yet (like geographic function)
This appears to be ambiguous and possible wrong. I am not sure if this statement refers to a specific geographic function or just the support for geographical data types or whether they are saying that without extensions it does not support geography. MariaDB supports geography via extensions according to this.. https://mariadb.com/kb/en/geographic-geometric-features/ ; I have not used them personally but I have used geographical extensions in postgres (named PostGIS) and adding extensions to a database is extremely trivial process. The PostGIS extension in Postgres (It is more accurately a library of functions and support for geography datatypes) is the best database support for geography I have come across so in principle there is nothing wrong with support via extensions. User TigaLightwave 18 September 2021

What on earth is library binary parity?
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=MariaDB&diff=prev&oldid=859343289 changed from library binary equivalency to library binary parity; and https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=MariaDB&diff=prev&oldid=369038618 initially wrote the damn confusing word. The reference never mentions "library binary".

On that account, I will remove this phrase. Gqqnb (talk) 15:16, 20 August 2023 (UTC)