Applying BSL to the MaxScale proxy is proving to be, so far, an unpopular decision among a large segment of the MySQL community. The TechCrunch article didn't

Applying BSL to the MaxScale proxy is proving to be, so far, an unpopular decision among a large segment of the MySQL community. The TechCrunch article didn't address this specifically, but the license for MaxScale requires a MariaDB Enterprise Subscription if you use MaxScale with just 3 or more database servers at your company. Since MaxScale is a proxy, it isn't particularly useful for companies that only have 1 or 2 database servers, except as a very limited trial. So this move effectively makes MaxScale commercial software for most production use. This is a strange business decision, considering there are other third-party proxies available, such as ProxySQL, that have same (or better) functionality and no requirement for purchasing a commercial license. I also wonder how MariaDB Enterprise Subscription pricing works for companies that just want to use MaxScale to connect to stock Oracle MySQL or Percona Server MySQL? Seems strange to tie the licensing to MariaDB Enterprise even for companies that just want to use MaxScale alone. Although a good proxy takes a lot of development work, it's still tiny compared to building a relational database. I wouldn't expect the two to be priced the same.