After a couple of years of relative calm, the relationship between MariaDB and its open source foundation was ruffled in February, leaving observers with a few unanswered questions.
Concern centered on Galera, a database clustering technology that the MariaDB plc company bought with Codership Oy in May last year.
In February, it appeared that the technology had been removed from future MariaDB Server versions, the open source version of MariaDB run by the MariaDB Foundation.
Federico Razzoli, director and founder of MariaDB consultancy Vettabase, posted online that the MariaDB community has reacted to the decision because Galera is important for building highly available architectures.
"Galera dependencies are being removed even from the binaries, without a commit message or a task description. From the GitHub discussions, those who should know what is happening appear to be in the dark," he complained.
Since then, there has been a U-turn from MariaDB. It announced that MariaDB Community Server 12.3 would continue to include Galera Cluster libraries. Galera is licensed under GPLv2.
"Community feedback is an important part of MariaDB, and recently, you made your voices heard regarding the inclusion of Galera Cluster in the 12.3 series… We've thoroughly considered your feedback and decided that now is not the time for a major change," said Max Mether, co-founder and veep for product management at MariaDB Corporation.
Nonetheless, Razzoli said the community needs reassurance that the company will not make a similar move to encourage users onto MariaDB plc's proprietary code. "I would like to see a promise from [MariaDB plc] on their website, saying 'our open source software will remain open,'" he told The Register.
MariaDB was forked from MySQL, the open source relational database created in 1995, after Oracle bought then-owner Sun Microsystems in 2010. In late 2022, MariaDB plc saw a SPAC-enabled IPO, after which there were lay-offs, "going concern" warnings, a sub-dollar share price, and a new management team. It also ditched flagship products. After all this, MariaDB plc was taken private, after which MariaDB Foundation CEO Kaj Arnö said "sanity" had returned to the relationship between the community and the company.
In a recent post on the Galera question, Arnö said there had been open dialogue, mutual respect, and a shared long-term interest in the MariaDB ecosystem.
MariaDB Foundation's Frederic Descamps, a community advocate, said there had been a "friendly reset" in the relationship. He added that the concerns about the future of Galera in MariaDB were a "predictable outcome of people caring about continuity."
He said the Galera library belongs with the community server packages. "A production-grade database needs a credible high-availability story, and I don't think removing long-standing capabilities from community users is the right direction. That's also why I consider 'part of the server' to include what has historically shipped as part of the community packages," he wrote in a post.
He said MariaDB plc deserved some credit for not simply forking Galera code after the acquisition, which would have been cheaper.
However, Peter Zaitsev, open source advocate and co-founder of the consultancy Percona, said the U-turn was "a good move for the community as a whole, and it shows how much impact a coordinated community can have when they speak with one voice."
But he added that it remains unclear what would happen when a more advanced form of Galera becomes available. "What will the long-term future for Galera development as part of MariaDB be? Will the Community edition continue to get Galera updates, or will this be held in place as a way to convince people to move to other versions of MariaDB?"
The Register has contacted MariaDB for further comment. ®
Source: The register