Yes, because MariaDB support is excellent and relatively affordable. On the other hand, you have Oracle...

Also, we like the percona performance patchset that made it into MariaDB and isn't in MySQL proper along with the pt-* toolset from percona.

> the percona performance patchset that made it into MariaDB and isn't in MySQL

Many Percona patches did make it into MySQL 5.7 and MySQL 8.0.

ServiceNow and Alibaba. At ServiceNow, our stack was built on top of MySQL from the beginning. It works for us. We left Oracle® MySQL for MariaDB largely because MariaDB actually seems to work to improve things for its bigger customers. Also, our SVP of Engineering is now on the MariaDB board.

AFAIU Alibaba uses AliSQL, based on MySQL 5.6 (not MariaDB): https://github.com/alibaba/AliSQL

Github's on MySQL https://githubengineering.com/mysql-high-availability-at-git...

Is this a serious question?

Yes, and I would recommend always assuming so on HN.

I don't quite see the unique advantages of MariaDB compared to current MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQL Server, CockroachDB, MemSQL, etc.

I don’t see the unique advantages of MySQL compared to current MariaDB, PostgreSQL, SQL Server, CockroachDB, MemSQL, etc.

In my case we switched to MariaDB because it fixed a number of glaring query optimizer failings much sooner than MySQL. And we've stuck with MariaDB because it has been much smoother and confidence-inspiring than MySQL when we used that.

We also use the TokuDB storage engine extensively, which is well supported by MariaDB. Whereas MySQL 8 is going in a very opinionated direction that I personally don't agree with.

Former product manager. Could you give some examples of what you mean by opinionated direction?