My understanding is that MariaDB is using an updated replication format which is not readable by Oracle MySQL or the Percona fork of MySQL. So you could not mai

My understanding is that MariaDB is using an updated replication format which is not readable by Oracle MySQL or the Percona fork of MySQL. So you could not maintain a MySQL slave of a MariaDB instance, and would have to take downtime to switch from MariaDB to MySQL. (This is only be true if you're using GTIDs in MariaDB, the old file:position format is still compatible. MariaDB does understand MySQL GTIDs, so replication from MySQL to MariaDB does work when using GTIDs in MySQL.)