Author Archives: Anna Widenius
Introduction
Over the past weeks, questions around Galera, high availability, and continuity have generated understandable concern within parts of the MariaDB community.
Clarity matters in moments like this.That is also why this response was unfortunately not immediate. It was important to understand the full picture and ensure that what we communicate reflects the actual state of responsibilities and decisions.
This post explains where things stand today, what has changed, and how the MariaDB Foundation views its role going forward. Directly. Transparently. With responsibility.
Galera and the community: acknowledging the reality
High availability has always mattered.
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We’re excited to welcome TidesDB as a Silver Sponsor of the MariaDB Foundation.
TidesDB’s sponsorship directly supports our mission to strengthen the MariaDB ecosystem and accelerate innovation through open, community-driven collaboration. Their commitment reflects a shared belief that open source databases thrive when strong technology and strong communities grow together.
Beyond sponsorship, TidesDB is contributing meaningful technology to the ecosystem through a new pluggable storage engine for MariaDB, designed for modern hardware. This integration expands the range of workloads MariaDB can serve while giving users and developers more choice, performance options, and flexibility.
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We are delighted to announce that Epsio (https://www.epsio.io/) has joined the MariaDB Foundation as an official silver sponsor.
Epsio’s commitment to innovation and open technology aligns closely with the mission of the MariaDB Foundation: to support and advance the MariaDB ecosystem and strengthen the long-term viability of MariaDB as a reliable, open source database platform. Their sponsorship will help fuel community initiatives, foster collaboration, and expand opportunities for developers and organizations around the world.
“We are excited to partner with Epsio,” said Anna, CEO at the MariaDB Foundation. “Their support is a meaningful contribution to our work and reflects shared values in open source, performance, and community empowerment.”
Epsio’s sponsorship will directly support the Foundation’s core activities, including community programs, developer engagement, and educational initiatives that drive the growth and sustainability of MariaDB globally.
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We are pleased to welcome Sylvain Arbaudie as a sponsor of the MariaDB Foundation.
Sylvain Arbaudie is an independent consultant with extensive experience helping organisations design reliable, scalable data infrastructures. Having worked primarily with commercial systems early in his career, Sylvain has witnessed how open source has matured into a powerful foundation for innovation, technological sovereignty, and long-term freedom—often surpassing proprietary alternatives in robustness and adaptability.
Among relational databases he has followed—MySQL, PostgreSQL, and MariaDB—Sylvain sees MariaDB as standing apart through its clarity of design, integrated ecosystem, and enterprise-grade reliability. These qualities make it a strong choice for organisations of all sizes, from individual founders to global enterprises.
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The MariaDB Foundation is pleased to welcome HammerDB as a Silver Sponsor.
HammerDB is the industry-standard open-source database benchmark, widely used across the database, cloud, and hardware ecosystem to evaluate mission-critical performance, scalability, and real-world workload behaviour. Its transparent and reproducible workloads are trusted by practitioners and vendors alike when validating performance claims, comparing configurations, and understanding database behaviour under load.
HammerDB is developed independently and hosted by the TPC Council as part of the TPC-OSS program, providing a neutral and credible reference point for performance evaluation.
HammerDB has long supported MariaDB and is frequently used by the community to test new releases, investigate performance regressions, and build confidence in production deployments.
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The Queen’s Seven Predictions for 2026
When Queen Isabella I of Castile agreed to fund Columbus, it was not because the idea felt daring or exciting. It was because the old routes were failing. Europe’s trade system had become expensive, fragile, and constrained, and maintaining it unchanged was no longer a neutral decision. Supporting the voyage was not an act of romance, but of governance: an acceptance that continuing as before carried greater risk than change.
Crucially, nothing collapsed overnight. Trade still flowed. Goods still arrived. But every journey became longer, costlier, and more politically exposed.
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We are delighted to welcome QUAPE, a Singapore-based leader in high-performance hosting and IT infrastructure, as a Silver Sponsor of the MariaDB Foundation.
Founded in 2006, QUAPE provides enterprise-grade hosting solutions for businesses across Asia and beyond — from dedicated servers and VPS platforms to cybersecurity and custom software development. Their long-standing focus on reliability, speed, and scalable infrastructure mirrors the values we uphold within the MariaDB ecosystem.
One of the core responsibilities of the Foundation is to maintain and advance the MariaDB buildbot infrastructure: the continuous integration system that tests every change, validates every platform, and keeps MariaDB Server stable for millions of users worldwide.
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Mirror, mirror on the wall — what do you measure when you measure us all?
Is it skill, or is it voice?
Is it code, or is it conversation?
DB-Engines is not a looking glass of perfection, but a mirror of perception — reflecting the chorus of those who search, speak, teach, compare, and build. And like every enchanted mirror, it shows not only what is, but what the world believes it sees.
MariaDB today stands firmly among the world’s top relational databases.
Not by inheritance, and not by illusion, but by the millions who use it, trust it, and shape it.
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Continue reading “Mirror, Mirror on DB-Engines: The MariaDB Story”