Our AI writing assistant, WriteUp, can assist you in easily writing any text. Click here to experience its capabilities.

MariaDB CEO: People who want things free also want to have very nice vacations

View Original View Raw

Summary

MariaDB, a former MySQL fork, is attempting to compete with hyperscaler database services by supporting multiple front ends. Following the company's stock market debut late last year, it has had to find a balance between its open source roots and the needs of investors and lenders. MariaDB has adopted the Business Source License (BSL), which critics contend is not truly open source. The company is also in advanced discussions with a large commercial bank about a loan facility. MariaDB is attempting to compete with Oracle in the cloud by offering its SkySQL database service and supporting a new generation of internet applications. Despite the optimism surrounding the company, challenges remain and it is unclear if enough people know how far it has come to give it a long road ahead.

Q&As

What is MariaDB's commercialization strategy?
MariaDB's commercialization strategy includes offering its SkySQL database service as a front end to other databases, including MongoDB, the NoSQL document store, and Apache Spark, the data lake technology around which Databricks was initially founded.

How has MariaDB attempted to balance its open source roots with investor and lender demands?
MariaDB has attempted to balance its open source roots with investor and lender demands by striking a balance between its open source roots and the needs of investors and lenders, and by forming a commercial offer to PostgreSQL users while increasing its contributions to the PostgreSQL open source community.

What are MariaDB's engineering efforts to strengthen deployment?
MariaDB's engineering efforts to strengthen deployment include being the first to be a persistent technology using Kubernetes, allowing deployment of the same database, whether in AWS, Azure, GCP or on-premises.

What is MariaDB's strategy to compete with Oracle?
MariaDB's strategy to compete with Oracle is to go after workloads from AWS, Google Cloud or Microsoft Azure database services, or be the first choice database services for application builders when starting out.

How has MariaDB's financial performance been since its IPO?
MariaDB's financial performance since its IPO has been positive, recording a 26 percent year-over-year increase in revenue to reach $13.5 million, although it was still making a net loss of $11.9 million, partly owing to the cost of going public.

AI Comments

👍 MariaDB has come a long way in a short period of time, and their efforts to create a second-generation cloud database service is commendable. It's great to see the company striving to support a new generation of internet applications with a global reach.

👎 Despite their progress, MariaDB is still facing challenges in finding the balance between their open source roots and the needs of investors and lenders. Their Business Source License (BSL) is not truly open source and does not allow users or developers to do what they want with the code.

AI Discussion

Me: It's about MariaDB and how they're trying to strike a balance between their open source roots and the demands of investors. They're launching a new database service and supporting different front ends, like MongoDB and PostgreSQL.

Friend: Interesting. What do you think the implications of this are?

Me: I think it's a sign that open source software is becoming more accepted by the mainstream and is being seen as a viable option for businesses. It also shows that businesses are embracing cloud-based services for their databases, which could be a challenge for traditional on-premise providers. It'll be interesting to see how MariaDB is able to compete with the larger tech companies, like Oracle and AWS.

Action items

Research the Business Source License (BSL) to understand the implications of using it for open source software.
Explore the features of MariaDB's SkySQL database service and compare it to other database services.
Investigate the potential of MariaDB's Xpand package for PostgreSQL users and the open source community.

Technical terms

MySQL: A relational database management system (RDBMS) developed by Oracle.
Fork: A software development process in which a copy of a program is created and modified to create a new version.
Hyperscaler: A cloud computing platform that provides services on a large scale.
Business Source License (BSL): A software license that allows users and developers to use the code but not modify it.
Kubernetes: An open-source system for automating deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications.
NoSQL: A type of database that does not use the traditional relational database model.
Apache Spark: An open-source data lake technology.
Xpand: A package offered by MariaDB that provides PostgreSQL compatibility without the forking drama.
EDB: EnterpriseDB, a company that provides PostgreSQL-compatible database services.
Trino: An open source data platform.
dbt: An open source data transformation tool.
SaaS: Software as a Service, a software delivery model in which software is licensed on a subscription basis and is centrally hosted.
AWS Aurora: A cloud-based relational database service offered by Amazon Web Services.
ServiceNow: A cloud-based workflow platform.
Betty Blocks: A low-code application development platform.
Appian: A low-code application development platform.