Oracle has been a reasonable steward of mysql. They started making releases again. They haven't really moved it forward but I am sure they are taking care of their customers.
So far I haven't been impressed with mariadb and the other forks. For instance I would download it because I heard some hype but the installer didn't work.
This simply is not true. I personally know a bunch of engineers who worked for MySQL AB and stayed on through the Sun and then Oracle acquisitions, and worked on MySQL that entire time.
Additional source: Sun acquired MySQL AB in early 2008. MySQL 5.1 was released in late 2008, and major releases continued on a cadence of every 2 to 2.5 years to this day. You can verify this via release notes, or via Wikipedia, among other sources.
> They haven't really moved it forward
This is purely a matter of opinion. From my own perspective, as someone who has been using MySQL for 15 years, I see substantial ongoing improvement in each major release.
If MySQL was as stagnant as you claim, why would the majority of the largest internet properties continue to rely on it as their primary data store?
However the fact that it's owned by Oracle does make it a little bit scary, even though we have no exposure to their code or anything linked at all. I sort of wish we'd chosen Postgres instead.