13 ms·

Mariadb.com is dead, long live MariaDB.org

236 points by edent 4y ago

T3RMINATED 4y ago
[dead]
ahofmann 4y ago
Oof. What does this mean for us people using mariadb? Is there a big company that uses mariadb enough, that the development of the db is secured?
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- davidmichael 4y ago
  There are a number of large companies sponsoring MariaDB.org development. I don't think there is any concern about its development going forward at this point. https://mariadb.org/donate/#corporate-sponsorships https://mariadb.org/donate/#corporate-sponsorships
felixgallo 4y ago
Shades of Basho (rip). One wonders if there is a curse on open source database companies. Maybe we could call it Data Gravity?
- marcosdumay 4y ago
  Postgres seems to be managing it pretty well. The curse is on companies that decide to completely own some popular open source program. If you are happy to just be successful together with other people, you'll be fine.
- ilyt 4y ago
  ??? They were never even a popular database in the first place
- assface 4y ago
  > Shades of Basho Can you please explain? They just ran out of money. They never did a SPAC.
  - felixgallo 4y ago
    https://www.theregister.com/2018/07/09/basho_damages_20m_misinformation_threats/ https://www.theregister.com/2018/07/09/basho_damages_20m_mis...
- sbuttgereit 4y ago
  I dunno... EnterpriseDB seems to be around year after year without too much drama. https://www.enterprisedb.com/ https://www.enterprisedb.com/
bratao 4y ago
I´m very sad that MariaDB is in this state. MySQL it still a very powerful database. For someone looking for alternatives, I recommend the Percona Distribution of MySQL. https://www.percona.com/software/mysql-database/percona-server https://www.percona.com/software/mysql-database/percona-serv...
- daneel_w 4y ago
  It's the commercial limb that has developed gangrene, not the software, not its founder, nor the developers. The software is (so far) not in any immediate danger.
stefanos82 4y ago
People, relax please! This is the company we are talking about, not the FOSS-ed version. If Microsoft has become a Platinum Sponsor for Azure support, you have nothing to worry about; the MySQL team that moved to MariaDB along with Monty will offer their support for you. See the video by Monty near the end of https://mariadb.org/donate/ https://mariadb.org/donate/
- avg_dev 4y ago
  > This entire article was written for one group of people. > > If you are employed at MariaDB, you absolutely need to be scheduling interviews with other companies.
shapefrog 4y ago
> the SPAC entity I stopped reading right there - MariaDB (corp) went public via a SPAC in Dec 2022. Hopefully this is nature healing itself and the Corp entity goes to the wall and the Open Source foundation sheds the parasite. I also hope all the grifters involved wind up broke and homeless.
lbhdc 4y ago
I was surprised when I saw them go public the other day. It wasn't really clear to me what their business plan was. At the time, I was still under the impression they had a bunch of spac money, but I had a hard time seeing a path for them to keep those coffers full. This seems like a mess.
wholinator2 4y ago
I guess i don't fully understand the distinction. So the company is going down, but the open source org is still alive. Did the company do most of the development? If they did was that development available to people using it 'for free'? Why was there a company in the first place, you'd think it would be hard to make money betting on a single open source database. My only interaction with MariaDB was picking it from a list of possible RDS images because the description basically said, "MySQL but better". Since i was paying AWS to run that service, was there money going to the MariaDB corporation? Or was AWS using the free open source one and pocketing the cash. I'm definitely out of my depth here
- that_guy_iain 4y ago
  I think MariaDB the company did the support contracts, probably funded some development, and had some commerical products. They had some of their own products because they created the Business Source License[1] where code becomes open-source after three years. [1] - https://mariadb.com/bsl11/ https://mariadb.com/bsl11/
- adduc 4y ago
  MariaDB Plc. appears to be the top contributor to MariaDB's codebase (81.9% of commits since the beginning of 2020)[0]. [0]: https://mariadb.org/mariadb-contribution-statistics-march-2023/ https://mariadb.org/mariadb-contribution-statistics-march-20...
  - tomxor 4y ago
    > MariaDB Plc. appears to be the top contributor to MariaDB's codebase (81.9% of commits since the beginning of 2020)[0]. For context MariaDB existed before 2020, Before the Plc, since 2009, and will continue to exist after.
- madeofpalk 4y ago
  Does the original creator have a third kid to name the next fork after?
  - 4y ago
eis 4y ago
This is the second time that Monty left a company that he had no control over even though it was his software "baby" that the company was selling. At least the first time he made some good money. But I'm not sure if that is the case this time. Third time's the charm? Monty you should retain control over the companies that you want to sell your product under. If you don't control over 50% then it's not "your company" anymore.
- bombcar 4y ago
  Maybe he has enough money to be comfortable and should just work on a non-profit doing database things.
- robocat 4y ago
  > If you don't control over 50% Founders will virtually always lose control once they hop on the investor conveyor belt. It can happen as soon as Round A e.g. VC wants 25% with 10% option pool and seed investors owns 15% (say due to carry along provisions) - et voila - founder diluted to 50%! It often is inevitable as soon as a founder takes seed money because (a) if you must take seed you probably need future cash for competitive growth, and (b) seed investors define expectation of future VC rounds (e.g. YC demo day). The well known exceptions where founders retained control are outliers. Furthermore, founders are third class because investors get first class preferential shares. Preferential shares have a variety of powerful benefits over common shares - including rights to oust the founders (under conditions that will usually occur: VCs take advantage of the natural optimism of founders). Even worse: the game is systematically rigged against founders, because VCs are “the house” and have been setting up the rules while playing multiple games for decades, but it is usually a founders first game. Bacon and egg breakfast: where the founders are the fully committed pigs providing the bacon, but the investors are chickens providing the eggs. 10 years of life is one hock. If a founder wins a game and want to play again, then a founder often starts their own casino by doing seed rounds. Sometimes a successful founder can afford to start a new business without using VC investment (self-invests). VC capital can be a drug worth taking if you fully manage your risks. Just beware that the industry rule-of-thumb is that 90% of the time a founder has an expected payout of approximately $0. The YCombinator casino is a bit of an exception because they better understand how much a founder is worth so they help founders play games with other casinos. But you still can’t argue that your sweat equity should be equally worth dollars invested: a software developer taking a $100k paycut for the first year of a startup should receive $100k of preferential shares - but I have never heard of that happening. Subtle game play.
mardifoufs 4y ago
I wonder if some distro repos will stop installing mariadb instead of mysql whenever you try to install mysql. Always struck me as a weird thing to do since mysql never stopped development. (MariaDB.org seems to be still active, but there is now much more uncertainty (imo) compared to the mysql project)
- ilyt 4y ago
  It's literally "lesser evil", as MySQL is owned by Oracle now.
- apocalyptic0n3 4y ago
  At a glance, it seems like the open source MariaDB is just fine. It's the commercial company that is dead/dying. This may affect future development on the OSS side, but for now it seems like there's no immediate danger. As for why it's included over MySQL, it's undoubtedly the fact that MySQL has been owned by Oracle since 2010. Oracle has not been the most friendly to OSS communities in the past.
  - usrusr 4y ago
    You were probably talking only about the OSS side of that particular RDBMS, but I believe that effect on OSS in general might actually be even more interesting: taking a few years of salaries from investors and then pack up when tensions over postponing profitability reach uncomfortable levels? At some point capital will start refusing to play that game. This is supposed to be about "racism, sexism" and stuff like that, but I don't necessarily see any contradiction. Because it's not unheard of that in troubled companies, questionable people rise to or stay in power that would not stand a chance in a more healthy environment where better candidates don't run away. Selection for the kind of person who'd rather be captain on a sinking wreck than some lower officer on a well run boat and I'd be surprised if there wasn't considerable correlation between those and the scandal that's supposedly the root cause here.
- flas9sd 4y ago
  as a database engines fan, I am glad for mariadb to have been the replacement in many distros. This way it got traction and mariadb did interesting things the last few years. Oracle mysql put out interesting releases with v8 again too. While I got hit by some bugs in mariadb, I did also benefit. As long as core developers aren't stranded or go outside sql/databases I don't think there is a technical loss.
fortran77 4y ago
What was the racism, sexism, and abuse at "MariaDB the Company"? A search yields no drama.
- justin_oaks 4y ago
  Have you tried asking ChatGPT? I'm sure it can come up with something. This is a reference to another HN item on the front page: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35468540 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35468540
ilyt 4y ago
[flagged]
- daneel_w 4y ago
  Amazed how, when it at the time had by far the largest share of global DB installations?
- Quarrel 4y ago
  Why should he have not sold it? Why does it make him an asshole? He's written two incredible open source tools, that are still open source. If someone then offers him some money to secure himself & family, why should he ignore them?
- joshmanders 4y ago
  Genuinely curious how much you've donated towards MySQL and MariaDB if you feel so strongly about him not "selling out".. My gut is telling me, much like everyone else who has similar distaste towards people being paid for their work, absolutely nothing.
- bewaretheirs 4y ago
  He sold to Sun Microsystems, not to Oracle. Oracle then bought Sun.
npteljes 4y ago
>This is yet another case of American corporatism failing the open source world. I believe that simply "This is yet another case of American corporatism failing", full stop. It's a loophole in the system. It's a good thing that MariaDB is open source, so that a failure like this can't bring the product down.
- hodgesrm 4y ago
  Could you be more specific about how American corporatism is failing open source in this case? MariaDB PLC is not profitable and most investors give it low chances of getting there. It's currently trading at 25% of the IPO price which was already 40% below the initial opening. [0, 1] (I hope I'm reading the numbers correctly.) [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34070451 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34070451 [1] https://finance.yahoo.com/news/mariadb-announces-first-quarter-fiscal-210500009.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/mariadb-announces-first-quart...
  - npteljes 4y ago
    I specifically wanted to say that American corporatism failing, and open source are not related, despite the article saying so. Open source is just fine, regardless of these things happening - even the MariaDB project will survive, I believe. In my eye, the ones most hurt are the employees, and the people who wanted the project to be successful, including Monty.
warent 4y ago
Good grief I don't know what to make of this, but it does make me feel glad that I've chosen to specialize in Postgres
kramerger 4y ago
This Michael Howard guy sounds like a greate dude... What did he do before joining and crashing mariadb?
- NelsonMinar 4y ago
  His LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-howard-2b7b273/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-howard-2b7b273/ He joined MariaDB 7 years ago, in 2015. Before then he hasC9 (A SaaS company), Greenplum, EMC, 10 jobs in total. In the late 90s he lists 4 years as "VP of data warehousing and integration technologies" at Oracle.
alfor 4y ago
In 2023 what is the advantage of mariaDB/mysql vs Postgres?
- mrunkel 4y ago
  Whichever one you know is the one for you.
- MangoCoffee 4y ago
  its probably the install base. if you look at share webhosting, most if not all offer MySql.
- flas9sd 4y ago
  there are less dimensions in user/access management to grok, no role privilege inheritance to think of. The public schema in psql has a surprise for unsuspecting mysql converts. Easier connection model. No vacuuming. Maxscale (by mariadb) is a good addition. Now you didn't ask for Postgres advantages but I know a lot too, I like the choice and competition.
- bojanz 4y ago
  Out of the box multi-master replication is a pretty big one.
Veen 4y ago
This article twice makes accusations of "racism, sexism, and abuse" without backing it up with facts. Is there any more information about it in the public sphere? Or is it just: "These things are bad and MariaDB is bad, so we'll say they did these things". It certainly seems like the company is going down the toilet, but I'd be dubious about the motivations of an anonymous rant on Medium about a publicly traded company.
- jjulius 4y ago
  The only article referencing those claims that I could find when Googling just now was this very article. Beyond that, there is a Glassdoor page with negative reviews that suggest the same.
  - tablespoon 4y ago
    > The only article referencing those claims that I could find when Googling just now was this very article. Beyond that, there is a Glassdoor page with negative reviews that suggest the same. I'm thinking those accusations are probably just slurs by someone with a grudge. I'm running into all kinds of paywalls with Glassdoor and I don't want to register, but google searches make it look like pretty much every company under the sun has a Glassdoor review complaining of racism, sexism, etc. For instance this one claims that Apple is homophobic, racist, sexist, and "very Trumpian": https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Employee-Review-Apple-RVW18218910.htm https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Employee-Review-Apple-RVW1...
    - mschuster91 4y ago
      > I'm running into all kinds of paywalls with Glassdoor and I don't want to register, but google searches make it look like pretty much every company under the sun has a Glassdoor review complaining of racism, sexism, etc. For instance this one claims that Apple is homophobic, racist, sexist, and "very Trumpian": The larger the company, the larger that departments will evolve their internal culture... and if team leads do not take care to prevent discriminatory bullshit, it will grow roots and fester. Every so often, I read here or on Reddit the question "why should companies involve themselves into kitchen room talk?"... the answer is simple: failure to do so will reflect very negatively on your company's image and thus its hiring perspectives. When I search for hotels, Amazon products, whatever - I don't go for the good reviews, I go for the bad ones.
geenat 4y ago
Bit of a nail in the coffin for me as of late. * No async drivers. * Total freezeup bug that only appears when MariaDB is under high load, since mid-2021 (10.6), not yet addressed. * Postgres 15 outperforming MariaDB in both my own SELECT and INSERT benchmarks. Up to double performance for INSERT. * Less and less compatibility with MySQL. Vitess dropping MariaDB. * Postgres has a lighter setup, super fast compile in 2023. Standalone / portable Postgres is amazing: https://gist.github.com/gnat/cfe3754c3dc817c7fb8b2225ef4db628 https://gist.github.com/gnat/cfe3754c3dc817c7fb8b2225ef4db62... I do enjoy the MariaDB / MySQL tooling and syntax way more as a developer, and MaxScale etc. seems good, but there's only so much BS i'm willing to deal with when Postgres exists.
- codr7 4y ago
  Postgres was the first relational database I came into contact with, Interbase the second and Oracle the third. Lately I've been writing a REST back end on top of MariaDB at work, and I swear it's going to drive me insane with its arbitrary limitations. At least SQLite offers something in return that Postgres can't do.
  - 5e92cb50239222b 4y ago
    > At least SQLite offers something in return that Postgres can't do. If you're going to throw allegations around, at least get your facts straight. MariaDB and MySQL support complex replication topologies out of the box, including multi-master. Yes, it does come in useful if implemented correctly: we built a business application for a particular setup with many branches around the country, many of which have very unreliable network and must be able to continue working with a local database when that network is not available. It has been running for 4-5 years without issues. They're also much easier to support: for example, upgrades are handled automatically — no need to dump and restore or resort to weird tricks; you can easily upgrade through ten major versions just by installing the latest version and restarting the daemon. Some other features off the top of my mind: compression (zlib, lz4, lzo, zstd), versioned tables (an absolute life-saver if you need audit).
    - 4y ago
313 4y ago
[flagged]
- hodgesrm 4y ago
  That's pretty good. Excuse the dumb question, but is that the same Michael Howard that runs MariaDB? If so, it just shows that you should always have another skill you can fall back on, such as street musician. (Personally I'm pretty handy at bagging groceries.)
  - dailydrudge 4y ago
    Yes that is him.
jcadam 4y ago
There are still plenty of devs who just spin up mysql (rather than mariadb) without thinking about it when starting a new project. Because that's what they always do.
- zerocrates 4y ago
  Why shouldn't they? MySQL 8 is pretty good.
djha-skin 4y ago
A lot of fear, uncertainty, and doubt here. Of course the banks backing out along with the founder is a bad sign. However, quoting "they may expire worthless" from an SEC filing and citing that as "evidence" is weak; SEC filings are full of what-if scenarios. From where I sit, $4.8 million in cash is plenty of runway for 100 people, even if it is a bit stiff for California. I'm not saying it won't shut down, but some of the specific arguments about why its demise is coming didn't land with me.
- tmpz22 4y ago
  > From where I sit, $4.8 million in cash is plenty of runway for 100 people, 4.800.000 / 100 = $48,000 per person. For one year. Not counting all other business expenses like servers. Laptops. Slack. Zoom.
  - djha-skin 4y ago
    These numbers assume no revenue however.
    - tmpz22 4y ago
      Are they going to attract a lot of big customers after this news?
      - alienzx 4y ago
        "news"
- zaidf 4y ago
  >From where I sit, $4.8 million in cash is plenty of runway for 100 people LinkedIn shows ~350 employees with about half of them in the US. $4.8 million is far from plenty to pay 300+ employees...not counting lawyers.
NelsonMinar 4y ago
Another SPAC story.
ThinkBeat 4y ago
As unwelcome as I find it, I guess this will cause people to switch to Oracle MySQL is they need full $$$$ support for their databases.
- fmajid 4y ago
  Could Percona be a white knight for MariaDB (the project, not the company)? Ownership by Oracle is an immediate deal-breaker for me.
INTPenis 4y ago
I don't wanna get involved in the politics of it all, and yes I love postgres too, I just want to say that Monty is a pretty cool founder. Several times I've come into their irc channel on libera and asked some dumb question and Monty himself answers me. How many other projects that have lived through an Oracle acquisition can you say that about?
habibur 4y ago
RIP : MySQL of the 90s that made the dynamic web possible. There were two options then. mSQL where you couldn't join between two tables. And Postgress95 which crashed sometimes as soon as a client connected. MySQL had been a breath of fresh air.
- joeatwork 4y ago
  Indeed - MySQL was fast, freely available, lightweight, and “good enough” (and continually getting better) in an era when the commercial competitors were ultraheavy, evil or broken (and often all three). Pour one out for a real one.
kerblang 4y ago
Well, I was wondering: Can one guy really IPO the same product twice? It was quite a clever stunt quitting Oracle, snagging IP on the way out, and just rinse/repeat to another $billion+ but it seemed to good to be true. I guess it was. (I am a MariaDB user, btw, so... hoping that it doesn't go completely in the toilet.)
- ergonaught 4y ago
  We didn't IPO MySQL, we were acquired by Sun. We were on track for IPO, yes, but there were too many acquisition offers to bother. Monty didn't "snag IP" or perform a "clever stunt". He forked a GPL codebase the same as anyone else can do. His goal was not to do another IPO. I get that talking about things you don't actually understand is perfectly human, but Monty's about 99% great guy pretty much all the time. If you want to snipe, take aim at the one thing he actually did wrong, instead of the things other people did wrong with his babies.
  - alienzx 4y ago
    one thing he did wrong like losing his company multiple times? sounds like hes bad at business
    - taskforcegemini 4y ago
      losing? afaik he sold it, getting millions out of it
concerned_ 4y ago
[flagged]
pachico 4y ago
I have plans to migrate all our MariaDB RDS instances to MySQL. AWS is heavily investing in MySQL (Aurora, even Serverless) while for MariaDB there is hardly any news. I'm sad, every time I do benchmarks for specific use cases, MariaDB turns out to have better performance but we do need to think about sustainability. Sooner or later, we will say good bye to it.
bastardoperator 4y ago
I've always gravitated towards MySQL because I had the most experience with. I recently started work with Supabase and Postgres, I don't think I'll ever look back.
jjluoma 4y ago
I would like to know more about those insurances, have they bought new ones? If so, are those really going to cover anything at all they would like to be covered? If there has been negligence, breach of duty or breach of trust in the past, why would a new insurance cover those?
nickstinemates 4y ago
Working with Monty was the best part of working at MariaDB. Hope he is doing well.
BonoboIO 4y ago
Should i short the stock?
- bigbillheck 4y ago
  If you have to ask, the answer is 'yes'.
mrtweetyhack 4y ago
[dead]
alienzx 4y ago
Whoever wrote this is an anonymous coward that was harassing employees from fake addresses and actively making up lies to sabotage the company for months. The person even made fake glassdoor reviews. It’s all half truths and bullshit. Is MariaDB perfect? Probably not, but they’re not about to go under. I mean the business writes all the code and keeps the foundation alive. I just checked with some people I know over there and they can still slack Monty. He is still in their hr thing. Also, the old CFO wasn’t fired, he had to leave for some reason but still worked there for months after. They have a new CFO already. https://mariadb.com/newsroom/press-releases/mariadb-names-conor-mccarthy-as-cfo/ https://mariadb.com/newsroom/press-releases/mariadb-names-co... Lawsuits are usually public and you can google it. There’s no crazy lawsuits like the person says. It’s just lies. My wall street buddy told me the insurance stuff is standard practice when a company goes public. I think every public company has this. All the stuff about business risk is like standard boilerplate stuff. Every company is at risk if they don’t make profit or meet targets. Like wtf? Even the stock price stuff - Look at the volumes, someone is screwing with them. Employees can’t sell yet anyway. There’s accusations of "racism, sexism, and abuse" but like their youtube has women and a guy with a turban and a bunch of other races. There’s no lawsuits I could find either. It’s like all taken out of context from SEC filings to make some sort of bullshit story.

236 points by edent 4y ago

[dead]

Oof. What does this mean for us people using mariadb? Is there a big company that uses mariadb enough, that the development of the db is secured?

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
davidmichael 4y ago
There are a number of large companies sponsoring MariaDB.org development. I don't think there is any concern about its development going forward at this point. https://mariadb.org/donate/#corporate-sponsorships https://mariadb.org/donate/#corporate-sponsorships

felixgallo 4y ago

Shades of Basho (rip). One wonders if there is a curse on open source database companies. Maybe we could call it Data Gravity?

marcosdumay 4y ago
Postgres seems to be managing it pretty well. The curse is on companies that decide to completely own some popular open source program. If you are happy to just be successful together with other people, you'll be fine.
ilyt 4y ago
??? They were never even a popular database in the first place
assface 4y ago
> Shades of Basho Can you please explain? They just ran out of money. They never did a SPAC.
- felixgallo 4y ago
  https://www.theregister.com/2018/07/09/basho_damages_20m_misinformation_threats/ https://www.theregister.com/2018/07/09/basho_damages_20m_mis...
sbuttgereit 4y ago
I dunno... EnterpriseDB seems to be around year after year without too much drama. https://www.enterprisedb.com/ https://www.enterprisedb.com/

bratao 4y ago

I´m very sad that MariaDB is in this state. MySQL it still a very powerful database. For someone looking for alternatives, I recommend the Percona Distribution of MySQL. https://www.percona.com/software/mysql-database/percona-server https://www.percona.com/software/mysql-database/percona-serv...

daneel_w 4y ago
It's the commercial limb that has developed gangrene, not the software, not its founder, nor the developers. The software is (so far) not in any immediate danger.

stefanos82 4y ago

People, relax please! This is the company we are talking about, not the FOSS-ed version. If Microsoft has become a Platinum Sponsor for Azure support, you have nothing to worry about; the MySQL team that moved to MariaDB along with Monty will offer their support for you. See the video by Monty near the end of https://mariadb.org/donate/ https://mariadb.org/donate/

avg_dev 4y ago
> This entire article was written for one group of people. > > If you are employed at MariaDB, you absolutely need to be scheduling interviews with other companies.

shapefrog 4y ago

> the SPAC entity I stopped reading right there - MariaDB (corp) went public via a SPAC in Dec 2022. Hopefully this is nature healing itself and the Corp entity goes to the wall and the Open Source foundation sheds the parasite. I also hope all the grifters involved wind up broke and homeless.

lbhdc 4y ago

I was surprised when I saw them go public the other day. It wasn't really clear to me what their business plan was. At the time, I was still under the impression they had a bunch of spac money, but I had a hard time seeing a path for them to keep those coffers full. This seems like a mess.

wholinator2 4y ago

I guess i don't fully understand the distinction. So the company is going down, but the open source org is still alive. Did the company do most of the development? If they did was that development available to people using it 'for free'? Why was there a company in the first place, you'd think it would be hard to make money betting on a single open source database. My only interaction with MariaDB was picking it from a list of possible RDS images because the description basically said, "MySQL but better". Since i was paying AWS to run that service, was there money going to the MariaDB corporation? Or was AWS using the free open source one and pocketing the cash. I'm definitely out of my depth here

that_guy_iain 4y ago
I think MariaDB the company did the support contracts, probably funded some development, and had some commerical products. They had some of their own products because they created the Business Source License[1] where code becomes open-source after three years. [1] - https://mariadb.com/bsl11/ https://mariadb.com/bsl11/
adduc 4y ago
MariaDB Plc. appears to be the top contributor to MariaDB's codebase (81.9% of commits since the beginning of 2020)[0]. [0]: https://mariadb.org/mariadb-contribution-statistics-march-2023/ https://mariadb.org/mariadb-contribution-statistics-march-20...
- tomxor 4y ago
  > MariaDB Plc. appears to be the top contributor to MariaDB's codebase (81.9% of commits since the beginning of 2020)[0]. For context MariaDB existed before 2020, Before the Plc, since 2009, and will continue to exist after.
madeofpalk 4y ago
Does the original creator have a third kid to name the next fork after?
- 4y ago

eis 4y ago

This is the second time that Monty left a company that he had no control over even though it was his software "baby" that the company was selling. At least the first time he made some good money. But I'm not sure if that is the case this time. Third time's the charm? Monty you should retain control over the companies that you want to sell your product under. If you don't control over 50% then it's not "your company" anymore.

bombcar 4y ago
Maybe he has enough money to be comfortable and should just work on a non-profit doing database things.
robocat 4y ago
> If you don't control over 50% Founders will virtually always lose control once they hop on the investor conveyor belt. It can happen as soon as Round A e.g. VC wants 25% with 10% option pool and seed investors owns 15% (say due to carry along provisions) - et voila - founder diluted to 50%! It often is inevitable as soon as a founder takes seed money because (a) if you must take seed you probably need future cash for competitive growth, and (b) seed investors define expectation of future VC rounds (e.g. YC demo day). The well known exceptions where founders retained control are outliers. Furthermore, founders are third class because investors get first class preferential shares. Preferential shares have a variety of powerful benefits over common shares - including rights to oust the founders (under conditions that will usually occur: VCs take advantage of the natural optimism of founders). Even worse: the game is systematically rigged against founders, because VCs are “the house” and have been setting up the rules while playing multiple games for decades, but it is usually a founders first game. Bacon and egg breakfast: where the founders are the fully committed pigs providing the bacon, but the investors are chickens providing the eggs. 10 years of life is one hock. If a founder wins a game and want to play again, then a founder often starts their own casino by doing seed rounds. Sometimes a successful founder can afford to start a new business without using VC investment (self-invests). VC capital can be a drug worth taking if you fully manage your risks. Just beware that the industry rule-of-thumb is that 90% of the time a founder has an expected payout of approximately $0. The YCombinator casino is a bit of an exception because they better understand how much a founder is worth so they help founders play games with other casinos. But you still can’t argue that your sweat equity should be equally worth dollars invested: a software developer taking a $100k paycut for the first year of a startup should receive $100k of preferential shares - but I have never heard of that happening. Subtle game play.

mardifoufs 4y ago

I wonder if some distro repos will stop installing mariadb instead of mysql whenever you try to install mysql. Always struck me as a weird thing to do since mysql never stopped development. (MariaDB.org seems to be still active, but there is now much more uncertainty (imo) compared to the mysql project)

ilyt 4y ago
It's literally "lesser evil", as MySQL is owned by Oracle now.
apocalyptic0n3 4y ago
At a glance, it seems like the open source MariaDB is just fine. It's the commercial company that is dead/dying. This may affect future development on the OSS side, but for now it seems like there's no immediate danger. As for why it's included over MySQL, it's undoubtedly the fact that MySQL has been owned by Oracle since 2010. Oracle has not been the most friendly to OSS communities in the past.
- usrusr 4y ago
  You were probably talking only about the OSS side of that particular RDBMS, but I believe that effect on OSS in general might actually be even more interesting: taking a few years of salaries from investors and then pack up when tensions over postponing profitability reach uncomfortable levels? At some point capital will start refusing to play that game. This is supposed to be about "racism, sexism" and stuff like that, but I don't necessarily see any contradiction. Because it's not unheard of that in troubled companies, questionable people rise to or stay in power that would not stand a chance in a more healthy environment where better candidates don't run away. Selection for the kind of person who'd rather be captain on a sinking wreck than some lower officer on a well run boat and I'd be surprised if there wasn't considerable correlation between those and the scandal that's supposedly the root cause here.
flas9sd 4y ago
as a database engines fan, I am glad for mariadb to have been the replacement in many distros. This way it got traction and mariadb did interesting things the last few years. Oracle mysql put out interesting releases with v8 again too. While I got hit by some bugs in mariadb, I did also benefit. As long as core developers aren't stranded or go outside sql/databases I don't think there is a technical loss.

fortran77 4y ago

What was the racism, sexism, and abuse at "MariaDB the Company"? A search yields no drama.

justin_oaks 4y ago
Have you tried asking ChatGPT? I'm sure it can come up with something. This is a reference to another HN item on the front page: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35468540 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35468540

ilyt 4y ago

[flagged]

daneel_w 4y ago
Amazed how, when it at the time had by far the largest share of global DB installations?
Quarrel 4y ago
Why should he have not sold it? Why does it make him an asshole? He's written two incredible open source tools, that are still open source. If someone then offers him some money to secure himself & family, why should he ignore them?
joshmanders 4y ago
Genuinely curious how much you've donated towards MySQL and MariaDB if you feel so strongly about him not "selling out".. My gut is telling me, much like everyone else who has similar distaste towards people being paid for their work, absolutely nothing.
bewaretheirs 4y ago
He sold to Sun Microsystems, not to Oracle. Oracle then bought Sun.

npteljes 4y ago

>This is yet another case of American corporatism failing the open source world. I believe that simply "This is yet another case of American corporatism failing", full stop. It's a loophole in the system. It's a good thing that MariaDB is open source, so that a failure like this can't bring the product down.

hodgesrm 4y ago
Could you be more specific about how American corporatism is failing open source in this case? MariaDB PLC is not profitable and most investors give it low chances of getting there. It's currently trading at 25% of the IPO price which was already 40% below the initial opening. [0, 1] (I hope I'm reading the numbers correctly.) [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34070451 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34070451 [1] https://finance.yahoo.com/news/mariadb-announces-first-quarter-fiscal-210500009.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/mariadb-announces-first-quart...
- npteljes 4y ago
  I specifically wanted to say that American corporatism failing, and open source are not related, despite the article saying so. Open source is just fine, regardless of these things happening - even the MariaDB project will survive, I believe. In my eye, the ones most hurt are the employees, and the people who wanted the project to be successful, including Monty.

warent 4y ago

Good grief I don't know what to make of this, but it does make me feel glad that I've chosen to specialize in Postgres

kramerger 4y ago

This Michael Howard guy sounds like a greate dude... What did he do before joining and crashing mariadb?

NelsonMinar 4y ago
His LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-howard-2b7b273/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-howard-2b7b273/ He joined MariaDB 7 years ago, in 2015. Before then he hasC9 (A SaaS company), Greenplum, EMC, 10 jobs in total. In the late 90s he lists 4 years as "VP of data warehousing and integration technologies" at Oracle.

alfor 4y ago

In 2023 what is the advantage of mariaDB/mysql vs Postgres?

mrunkel 4y ago
Whichever one you know is the one for you.
MangoCoffee 4y ago
its probably the install base. if you look at share webhosting, most if not all offer MySql.
flas9sd 4y ago
there are less dimensions in user/access management to grok, no role privilege inheritance to think of. The public schema in psql has a surprise for unsuspecting mysql converts. Easier connection model. No vacuuming. Maxscale (by mariadb) is a good addition. Now you didn't ask for Postgres advantages but I know a lot too, I like the choice and competition.
bojanz 4y ago
Out of the box multi-master replication is a pretty big one.

Veen 4y ago

This article twice makes accusations of "racism, sexism, and abuse" without backing it up with facts. Is there any more information about it in the public sphere? Or is it just: "These things are bad and MariaDB is bad, so we'll say they did these things". It certainly seems like the company is going down the toilet, but I'd be dubious about the motivations of an anonymous rant on Medium about a publicly traded company.

jjulius 4y ago
The only article referencing those claims that I could find when Googling just now was this very article. Beyond that, there is a Glassdoor page with negative reviews that suggest the same.
- tablespoon 4y ago
  > The only article referencing those claims that I could find when Googling just now was this very article. Beyond that, there is a Glassdoor page with negative reviews that suggest the same. I'm thinking those accusations are probably just slurs by someone with a grudge. I'm running into all kinds of paywalls with Glassdoor and I don't want to register, but google searches make it look like pretty much every company under the sun has a Glassdoor review complaining of racism, sexism, etc. For instance this one claims that Apple is homophobic, racist, sexist, and "very Trumpian": https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Employee-Review-Apple-RVW18218910.htm https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Employee-Review-Apple-RVW1...
  - mschuster91 4y ago
    > I'm running into all kinds of paywalls with Glassdoor and I don't want to register, but google searches make it look like pretty much every company under the sun has a Glassdoor review complaining of racism, sexism, etc. For instance this one claims that Apple is homophobic, racist, sexist, and "very Trumpian": The larger the company, the larger that departments will evolve their internal culture... and if team leads do not take care to prevent discriminatory bullshit, it will grow roots and fester. Every so often, I read here or on Reddit the question "why should companies involve themselves into kitchen room talk?"... the answer is simple: failure to do so will reflect very negatively on your company's image and thus its hiring perspectives. When I search for hotels, Amazon products, whatever - I don't go for the good reviews, I go for the bad ones.

geenat 4y ago

Bit of a nail in the coffin for me as of late. * No async drivers. * Total freezeup bug that only appears when MariaDB is under high load, since mid-2021 (10.6), not yet addressed. * Postgres 15 outperforming MariaDB in both my own SELECT and INSERT benchmarks. Up to double performance for INSERT. * Less and less compatibility with MySQL. Vitess dropping MariaDB. * Postgres has a lighter setup, super fast compile in 2023. Standalone / portable Postgres is amazing: https://gist.github.com/gnat/cfe3754c3dc817c7fb8b2225ef4db628 https://gist.github.com/gnat/cfe3754c3dc817c7fb8b2225ef4db62... I do enjoy the MariaDB / MySQL tooling and syntax way more as a developer, and MaxScale etc. seems good, but there's only so much BS i'm willing to deal with when Postgres exists.

codr7 4y ago
Postgres was the first relational database I came into contact with, Interbase the second and Oracle the third. Lately I've been writing a REST back end on top of MariaDB at work, and I swear it's going to drive me insane with its arbitrary limitations. At least SQLite offers something in return that Postgres can't do.
- 5e92cb50239222b 4y ago
  > At least SQLite offers something in return that Postgres can't do. If you're going to throw allegations around, at least get your facts straight. MariaDB and MySQL support complex replication topologies out of the box, including multi-master. Yes, it does come in useful if implemented correctly: we built a business application for a particular setup with many branches around the country, many of which have very unreliable network and must be able to continue working with a local database when that network is not available. It has been running for 4-5 years without issues. They're also much easier to support: for example, upgrades are handled automatically — no need to dump and restore or resort to weird tricks; you can easily upgrade through ten major versions just by installing the latest version and restarting the daemon. Some other features off the top of my mind: compression (zlib, lz4, lzo, zstd), versioned tables (an absolute life-saver if you need audit).
  - 4y ago

313 4y ago

[flagged]

hodgesrm 4y ago
That's pretty good. Excuse the dumb question, but is that the same Michael Howard that runs MariaDB? If so, it just shows that you should always have another skill you can fall back on, such as street musician. (Personally I'm pretty handy at bagging groceries.)
- dailydrudge 4y ago
  Yes that is him.

jcadam 4y ago

There are still plenty of devs who just spin up mysql (rather than mariadb) without thinking about it when starting a new project. Because that's what they always do.

zerocrates 4y ago
Why shouldn't they? MySQL 8 is pretty good.

djha-skin 4y ago

A lot of fear, uncertainty, and doubt here. Of course the banks backing out along with the founder is a bad sign. However, quoting "they may expire worthless" from an SEC filing and citing that as "evidence" is weak; SEC filings are full of what-if scenarios. From where I sit, $4.8 million in cash is plenty of runway for 100 people, even if it is a bit stiff for California. I'm not saying it won't shut down, but some of the specific arguments about why its demise is coming didn't land with me.

tmpz22 4y ago
> From where I sit, $4.8 million in cash is plenty of runway for 100 people, 4.800.000 / 100 = $48,000 per person. For one year. Not counting all other business expenses like servers. Laptops. Slack. Zoom.
- djha-skin 4y ago
  These numbers assume no revenue however.
  - tmpz22 4y ago
    Are they going to attract a lot of big customers after this news?
    - alienzx 4y ago
      "news"
zaidf 4y ago
>From where I sit, $4.8 million in cash is plenty of runway for 100 people LinkedIn shows ~350 employees with about half of them in the US. $4.8 million is far from plenty to pay 300+ employees...not counting lawyers.

NelsonMinar 4y ago

Another SPAC story.

ThinkBeat 4y ago

As unwelcome as I find it, I guess this will cause people to switch to Oracle MySQL is they need full $$$$ support for their databases.

fmajid 4y ago
Could Percona be a white knight for MariaDB (the project, not the company)? Ownership by Oracle is an immediate deal-breaker for me.

INTPenis 4y ago

I don't wanna get involved in the politics of it all, and yes I love postgres too, I just want to say that Monty is a pretty cool founder. Several times I've come into their irc channel on libera and asked some dumb question and Monty himself answers me. How many other projects that have lived through an Oracle acquisition can you say that about?

habibur 4y ago

RIP : MySQL of the 90s that made the dynamic web possible. There were two options then. mSQL where you couldn't join between two tables. And Postgress95 which crashed sometimes as soon as a client connected. MySQL had been a breath of fresh air.

joeatwork 4y ago
Indeed - MySQL was fast, freely available, lightweight, and “good enough” (and continually getting better) in an era when the commercial competitors were ultraheavy, evil or broken (and often all three). Pour one out for a real one.

kerblang 4y ago

Well, I was wondering: Can one guy really IPO the same product twice? It was quite a clever stunt quitting Oracle, snagging IP on the way out, and just rinse/repeat to another $billion+ but it seemed to good to be true. I guess it was. (I am a MariaDB user, btw, so... hoping that it doesn't go completely in the toilet.)

ergonaught 4y ago
We didn't IPO MySQL, we were acquired by Sun. We were on track for IPO, yes, but there were too many acquisition offers to bother. Monty didn't "snag IP" or perform a "clever stunt". He forked a GPL codebase the same as anyone else can do. His goal was not to do another IPO. I get that talking about things you don't actually understand is perfectly human, but Monty's about 99% great guy pretty much all the time. If you want to snipe, take aim at the one thing he actually did wrong, instead of the things other people did wrong with his babies.
- alienzx 4y ago
  one thing he did wrong like losing his company multiple times? sounds like hes bad at business
  - taskforcegemini 4y ago
    losing? afaik he sold it, getting millions out of it

concerned_ 4y ago

[flagged]

pachico 4y ago

I have plans to migrate all our MariaDB RDS instances to MySQL. AWS is heavily investing in MySQL (Aurora, even Serverless) while for MariaDB there is hardly any news. I'm sad, every time I do benchmarks for specific use cases, MariaDB turns out to have better performance but we do need to think about sustainability. Sooner or later, we will say good bye to it.

bastardoperator 4y ago

I've always gravitated towards MySQL because I had the most experience with. I recently started work with Supabase and Postgres, I don't think I'll ever look back.

jjluoma 4y ago

I would like to know more about those insurances, have they bought new ones? If so, are those really going to cover anything at all they would like to be covered? If there has been negligence, breach of duty or breach of trust in the past, why would a new insurance cover those?

nickstinemates 4y ago

Working with Monty was the best part of working at MariaDB. Hope he is doing well.

BonoboIO 4y ago

Should i short the stock?

bigbillheck 4y ago
If you have to ask, the answer is 'yes'.

mrtweetyhack 4y ago

[dead]

alienzx 4y ago

Whoever wrote this is an anonymous coward that was harassing employees from fake addresses and actively making up lies to sabotage the company for months. The person even made fake glassdoor reviews. It’s all half truths and bullshit. Is MariaDB perfect? Probably not, but they’re not about to go under. I mean the business writes all the code and keeps the foundation alive. I just checked with some people I know over there and they can still slack Monty. He is still in their hr thing. Also, the old CFO wasn’t fired, he had to leave for some reason but still worked there for months after. They have a new CFO already. https://mariadb.com/newsroom/press-releases/mariadb-names-conor-mccarthy-as-cfo/ https://mariadb.com/newsroom/press-releases/mariadb-names-co... Lawsuits are usually public and you can google it. There’s no crazy lawsuits like the person says. It’s just lies. My wall street buddy told me the insurance stuff is standard practice when a company goes public. I think every public company has this. All the stuff about business risk is like standard boilerplate stuff. Every company is at risk if they don’t make profit or meet targets. Like wtf? Even the stock price stuff - Look at the volumes, someone is screwing with them. Employees can’t sell yet anyway. There’s accusations of "racism, sexism, and abuse" but like their youtube has women and a guy with a turban and a bunch of other races. There’s no lawsuits I could find either. It’s like all taken out of context from SEC filings to make some sort of bullshit story.