“I Am Not Building Cadillacs Anymore”

The Ford–Cadillac Parable

In 1902, Henry Ford’s second car company was taken over by investors and renamed Cadillac. The designs were his. The engineering was his. But the brand? That now belonged to someone else.

So Ford walked away and started fresh.

Years later, even as Ford cars became wildly successful, people kept asking:

“Are you the guy who builds Cadillacs?”

To which he had to answer—over and over again:

“No. I’m not building Cadillacs anymore.”

It took years before the public truly grasped the difference.

Cadillac kept the name.

Ford built the future.

The Premise: A Familiar Conversation

In conversations from Jakarta to Frankfurt, the pattern repeats:

Partner: “We love MariaDB. We support it, we use it internally, and over 60% of our customers rely on it.”
Me: “Then why does your public messaging still lead with MySQL?”
(Pause)
Partner: “Well… the name is more familiar. And since MariaDB is a drop-in replacement, it’s basically the same thing, right?”

Wrong.

MariaDB is not “basically the same thing.”
It has evolved—deliberately, decisively, and according to its original open source roots.

Behind every release—whether it’s InnoDB performance, Optimizer enhancements, the fastest open source vector search, or Oracle compatibility improvements—stand thousands of hours of engineering and an ecosystem that evolves through open collaboration, not centralized control.

MariaDB customers and community drive the roadmap.

MariaDB Foundation safeguards the openness.

MariaDB plc leads the engineering and delivers the innovations that makes MariaDB enterprise-grade and production-ready.

Our partners help ensure MariaDB runs everywhere—with every stack, on every cloud.

Why Recognition Matters

When MariaDB goes unnamed, the story gets distorted.
Contributors lose credit and visibility. Companies lose recognition. Innovation gets misplaced.

We’ve spent sixteen years building something stronger, leaner, and freer than what came before. And still, too often, the world defaults to the old label. That’s not just inaccurate—it’s limiting.

Because MariaDB isn’t riding on someone else’s legacy.
We are building our own legacy. And we are the future.

We’ve Already Taken the Stage

MariaDB runs banks, powers governments, scales global SaaS, and anchors the stacks of companies who care deeply about performance, transparency, and independence.

We’re not waiting for permission to lead.
We’re already leading.

So yes—let’s be clear:

We are not building Cadillacs anymore.

We’re building MariaDB.
And it’s time everyone said the name out loud.