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A comment on Making MySQL Better at GitHub. Parent comment

Re:Making MySQL Better at GitHub by viraptor on Tuesday September 02, 2014 @08:16PM (#8260897)
Yes, they're ok-ish. But the original claim was "MariaDB isn't a replacement for the stock version of MySQL".

Actually yes, it is. It doesn't work the other way around (for example timestamp column has a different description, so dump cannot be loaded into MySQL). But you can use MariaDB in place of MySQL and there should be no performance degradation, since they come from the same codebase.

Reliability was mentioned too - in that case Oracle actually failed by holding back tests. In MariaDB you can reproduce testing if you want. In MySQL not anymore.

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Re:Making MySQL Better at GitHub by jeremycole on Tuesday September 02, 2014 @09:04PM (#8261047)
No, not really. MariaDB is completely dependent on Oracle and Percona. While they are doing some good work, they are by no means a complete and independent fork, nor do they have the resources to be.

MariaDB is also impacted by the lack of tests, they are absolutely not making replacements for all those tests, and they continue to pull code from upstream. So, same problem there.

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Re:Making MySQL Better at GitHub by sjwright on Wednesday September 03, 2014 @09:14PM (#8266306)
This might have been true in 2011-12, but today MariaDB is demonstrably NOT dependent on Oracle or Percona. If both disappeared tomorrow, it would still continue.

The fact that they continue to "pull" some code is because they're not idiots, and aren't going to duplicate effort. As far as I'm aware, they are now being very selective about what they pull.

Calling Oracle an "upstream" is a joke. They aren't publishing atomic changesets, which also means the Oracle fork of MySQL is no longer a morally Open Source software program.

MariaDB is NOT impacted by some vaporous lack of tests. They are building tests for every change they're making. As for the tests privately held by Oracle, well, those tests don't help anyone because they're not public and don't enjoy public scrutiny. Who knows if they're even running them?

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Re:Making MySQL Better at GitHub by sjwright on Wednesday September 03, 2014 @10:34PM (#8266501)
> nor do they have the resources to be.

They have received large investments from companies like Intel, and have been granted extensive engineering (and probably financial) help from companies like Google and Facebook. Probably many others. And they have most of the MySQL brains-trust in their employ, Monty most famously. I don't know how anyone could argue they're under-resourced for the task of maintaining and improving a mature product.

Compare that with Oracle, who pulls dangerous stunts like this: http://ronaldbradford.com/blog/when-is-a-crashing-mysql-bug-...

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Re:Making MySQL Better at GitHub by spudlyo on Saturday September 06, 2014 @12:59PM (#8278784)
I don't know how anyone could argue they're under-resourced for the task of maintaining and improving a mature product.

You mean Jeremy Cole, the guy you're arguing with, who led the effort at Google to standardize on MariaDB[0], who worked for many years with Monty at MySQL AB and who is a recognized leader in the MySQL community?[1] Fuck that guy, I have no idea how he could have such an opinion.

[0]: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/09/12/google_mariadb_mysql...

[1]: http://openlife.cc/blogs/2013/april/mysql-community-awards-2...

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