FOSDEM Fringe Schedule is Up

The schedule is up! https://mariadb.org/fest2024-brussels/

We are lucky and happy to have a great line-up of presenters for the MariaDB Server Fest 2-3 Feb 2024, a FOSDEM Fringe event during the Friday and Saturday of the FOSDEM weekend in Brussels.

Please join us in person in Brussels!

The event is, quite like FOSDEM this year, a physical one. You are welcome to join it in person, for free – less than 2 km from the university where FOSDEM convenes.

Friday is Migration and Money …

We start on Friday before FOSDEM itself, with the “Migration and Money” day.

Feeling good: End-of-year recap of 2023

Our Sea Lion celebrates the end of a successful year, with a touch of Christmas spirit. We asked our AI Santa to create artwork that “evokes a sense of gratitude, optimism, and the magic of the holidays beneath the waves” – let me accompany the outcome with some reflections on the successful ending of the year.

Homework:  What makes you feel good?

The trigger for the reflections was the last team Zoom meeting of the year, on Tuesday. I had asked everyone to prepare by doing a personal recap of what has happened the last three months (basically since our Staff meeting, (Un)conference, and MariaDB Server Fest early October).

Looking for more migration guinea pigs

Remember our open letter, Looking for MySQL 5.7 or 8.0 guinea pigs?

We caught a nice German guinea pig!

We caught a nice guinea pig, a German one, from Hannover. They are currently using MySQL 5.7 (as was our prime wish), and they will be doing a live migration to MariaDB 10.11. They have 1.000.000.000 queries a day, their database size is 412 GB, and our goal is to the migration of the production data in less than five minutes – during our MariaDB Migration Workshop at our pre-FOSDEM event on Friday 2 Feb 2024.

Generative AI and MariaDB Server

“Generative AI is a can of worms that has to be opened”. That was the laconic comment from a senior industry influencer, when I shared MariaDB Foundation’s plans for successively making MariaDB Server a platform for AI solutions. The statement combines the opportunity with the inevitability, the complexity with the need for stepwise refinement.

Late to the game?

Are we late to the game? I believe not. I believe this is the right timing. Open Source isn’t a pioneer when it comes to basic research or even early product development.

Looking for MySQL 5.7 or 8.0 guinea pigs

Dear users of MySQL 5.7 (or 8.0)!

Are you interested in getting help migrating to MariaDB 10.6 or 10.11, the latest long-term support releases? Are you coming to Brussels for FOSDEM in February? Do you have an open attitude, not minding to show a bit of dirty laundry in front of other users?

Then you may be a perfect candidate for our MariaDB Migration Workshop at our pre-FOSDEM event on Friday 2 Feb 2024. The workshop will be led by none other than the father of both MySQL Server and MariaDB Server, namely Michael “Monty” Widenius.

A positive new chapter for MariaDB Server

MariaDB Server has lots of energy and potential to increase its impact amongst Open Source RDBMSes. As the CEO of MariaDB Foundation, I’m happy to note that I can finally share a positive outlook for the next chapters in the story of MariaDB Server, based on what is happening with its namesake commercial entity, MariaDB plc. After years of missed opportunities, let me share with you why and how I have entered into this positive mood. 

The Foundation and the plc are two separate entities … 

Let me begin by reiterating what is clear only to those following MariaDB Server very closely, namely that MariaDB Foundation and MariaDB plc are two separate entities, with separate governance, separate staff, and separate – although not conflicting – goals. 

MariaDB Foundation Announces AWS as a Diamond Sponsor

HELSINKI — 4 October 2023 – The MariaDB Foundation, the global contact point for collaboration on the MariaDB Server, announced today that Amazon Web Services (AWS) has joined the Foundation as its first Diamond sponsor in order to continue the mission of openness, adoption and continuity for the MariaDB open source project.

According to the DB-Engines ranking list, the MariaDB Server is the third most popular open source relational database and ninth most popular relational database overall. This sponsorship will allow the Foundation to continue investing in its compatibility with other popular database solutions as well as to explore the role MariaDB Server can play in the growing world of generative AI.

MariaDB Un(Conference) and ServerFest Schedule 3-5 Oct 2023

We are happy to release the schedule (https://mariadb.org/fest2023-schedule/) of our upcoming meeting week Tue-Thu 3-5 October 2023.

The week comes with meetings in four flavours:

  1. The MariaDB Server Fest presentations, directed at users of MariaDB Server. This is on Thursday 5 October 2023.
  2. The MariaDB Unconference presentations, directed at core developers of MariaDB Server. This is on Wednesday 4 October 2023.
  3. The MariaDB Unconference work sessions, interactions getting work done between MariaDB Foundation staff and core members of the ecosystem (including but not limited to MariaDB plc employees).