5 ms·

For context, Alibaba uses their own fork of MySQL which is AliSQL: https://github.com/alibaba/AliSQL https://github.com/alibaba/AliSQL

smaili 9y ago
I'm curious what would be their motivation for investing so much in MariaDB when they already have their own? Hedging bets? Encouraging competition?
- Footkerchief 9y ago
  Their Github indicates there's cross-pollination: > Moreover, it includes patches from Percona, WebScaleSQL, and MariaDB.
- buahahaha 9y ago
  Getting out of the business of having their own?
  - dward 9y ago
    With Alibaba cloud, infrastructure like databases is their business. Take AWS Aurora and GCP Spanner as examples.
    - andreasklinger 9y ago
      But it's also easier to sell a standard DB people already know vs a custom (see (google) Bigtable vs (amazon) Postgres)
      - aoeusnth1 9y ago
        Those aren't exactly comparable products - also, is it obvious which one sells better? Is it well known that amazon postgres sells like hotcakes?
      - darkr 9y ago
        Odd comparison, Google has supported MySQL for a long time, as has AWS. Dynamo might be a slightly closer comparison
        dward 9y ago
        Google Cloud SQL supports postgres as well.
        andreasklinger 9y ago
        that's kind of my point databases people know and use already (eg in fun projects) are easier to sell
      - ngrilly 9y ago
        Google Cloud SQL and AWS RDS now both support PostgreSQL.
- lambda 9y ago
  Looking at their commit history, it's not a fork in the sense of "we're actively developing our own new features and diverging from upstream", it's a fork in the sense of "we've taken a stable release from upstream, applied some of our own patches, some backported patches, and some patches from other forks." It's a fork as much as the stable packages that RedHat or Debian ships are "forks" since they have a few patches applied to customize for their environment and fix a few issues that hadn't made it upstream by the time they picked a stable release to base on. MariaDB is an active, independently developed project. They are probably funding MariaDB because working with upstream developers of an actively developed fork can be more efficient than striking out on their own with another actual fork. I wouldn't be surprised if they eventually start using MariaDB, and either rebase their AliSQL patches on top of it or drop AliSQL altogether (much of it just looks like backports of bugs or features).
wanghq 9y ago
FYI: Alibaba is also developing its own Aurora like DB. https://www.yicaiglobal.com/news/alibaba%E2%80%99s-new-cloud-database-can-back-100-terabytes-data-just-one-minute https://www.yicaiglobal.com/news/alibaba%E2%80%99s-new-cloud... A more detailed intro (in Chinese) can be found at http://www.infoq.com/cn/news/2017/08/ali-polardb http://www.infoq.com/cn/news/2017/08/ali-polardb. Alibaba has developed another DB called OceanBase (open source). https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12925679 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12925679

smaili 9y ago

I'm curious what would be their motivation for investing so much in MariaDB when they already have their own? Hedging bets? Encouraging competition?

Footkerchief 9y ago
Their Github indicates there's cross-pollination: > Moreover, it includes patches from Percona, WebScaleSQL, and MariaDB.
buahahaha 9y ago
Getting out of the business of having their own?
- dward 9y ago
  With Alibaba cloud, infrastructure like databases is their business. Take AWS Aurora and GCP Spanner as examples.
  - andreasklinger 9y ago
    But it's also easier to sell a standard DB people already know vs a custom (see (google) Bigtable vs (amazon) Postgres)
    - aoeusnth1 9y ago
      Those aren't exactly comparable products - also, is it obvious which one sells better? Is it well known that amazon postgres sells like hotcakes?
    - darkr 9y ago
      Odd comparison, Google has supported MySQL for a long time, as has AWS. Dynamo might be a slightly closer comparison
      - dward 9y ago
        Google Cloud SQL supports postgres as well.
        andreasklinger 9y ago
        that's kind of my point databases people know and use already (eg in fun projects) are easier to sell
    - ngrilly 9y ago
      Google Cloud SQL and AWS RDS now both support PostgreSQL.
lambda 9y ago
Looking at their commit history, it's not a fork in the sense of "we're actively developing our own new features and diverging from upstream", it's a fork in the sense of "we've taken a stable release from upstream, applied some of our own patches, some backported patches, and some patches from other forks." It's a fork as much as the stable packages that RedHat or Debian ships are "forks" since they have a few patches applied to customize for their environment and fix a few issues that hadn't made it upstream by the time they picked a stable release to base on. MariaDB is an active, independently developed project. They are probably funding MariaDB because working with upstream developers of an actively developed fork can be more efficient than striking out on their own with another actual fork. I wouldn't be surprised if they eventually start using MariaDB, and either rebase their AliSQL patches on top of it or drop AliSQL altogether (much of it just looks like backports of bugs or features).

wanghq 9y ago

FYI: Alibaba is also developing its own Aurora like DB. https://www.yicaiglobal.com/news/alibaba%E2%80%99s-new-cloud-database-can-back-100-terabytes-data-just-one-minute https://www.yicaiglobal.com/news/alibaba%E2%80%99s-new-cloud... A more detailed intro (in Chinese) can be found at http://www.infoq.com/cn/news/2017/08/ali-polardb http://www.infoq.com/cn/news/2017/08/ali-polardb. Alibaba has developed another DB called OceanBase (open source). https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12925679 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12925679