Board Meeting 3/2024 Minutes: Wed 4 Sep 2024 16:00-17:00 EET

Present board members:

  • Eric Herman, Chairman
  • Barry Abrahamson, Automattic 
  • Todd Boyd, IBM
  • Paul O’Brien, MariaDB plc
  • Espen Håkonsen, Crayon Group
  • Sergei Golubchik, MariaDB Corporation
  • Sean Xiang Peng, Alibaba
  • Jignesh Shah, Amazon (from item 2)
  • Steve Shaw, Intel 
  • Michael Widenius, MariaDB Corporation

Absent board members:

  • Sirish Chandrasekaran, Amazon (until item 2)

Present observers:

  • Peng Khim, DBS Bank
  • Stanislav Protassov, Acronis
  • Jignesh Shah, Amazon (until item 2)

Absent observers:

  • Serguei Beloussov, Constructor (formerly SIT)
  • Mark Stockford, ServiceNow

1. Replacement of Amazon AWS Board representative

Proposal: Replacement of Board member Sirish Chandrasekaran (General Manager, Amazon RDS) with Jignesh Shah (General Manager, Amazon RDS Open Source Engines), representing Amazon AWS

Reasoning: Request by Amazon / Sirish, due to personnel changes in RDS.

Decision: Approved

2. CEO Update 

2.1 The state of Finances

At the last board meeting in May, the CEO said that the finances were challenging and uncertain, and expected more certainty at the current (September) board meeting.

Now there indeed is more certainty. The one-liner summary is that finances are “sustainable but with some uncertainty and a clear upside”.

This year, we have received sponsorships for the total amount of 716.000 €, some of them delayed payments from 2023 (up from 66.000 € previous BoD mtg). We are looking at a solid perspective of renewals of additional 700.000 € (up from 549.000 € at previous BoD mtg). The further sponsor leads were last BoD mtg projected at 300.000 € as “upside” in startup lingo, theoretically also adding 300.000 € for government type contracts. We don’t believe government contracts will materialise in 2024, but we do expect further sponsorship payments. 

All in all, this gives us a much better financial solidity than previous years. The current balance on the bank plus the invoiced ones that we count on with certainty will cover all salaries until the end of 2024 and into the beginning of 2025, including  the CEO and the Chief of Staff. 

Given the tight spot we have been in during previous years, we have done only one new recruitment (Kristian Nielsen, see item 2.2) and plan for making one contractor more permanent (Robert Silén). We find it wise to build cushion and headroom, until we have firm multi-year sponsorship commitments to warrant more bold plans.

As for the Diamond sponsorships, one is paid and on our accounts, but the publishing plan is still not approved so the sponsor cannot be shared. As for the renewal by Amazon AWS, Jignesh asked for the renewal invoice for the Diamond Sponsorship last week, we sent it, and it’s being reviewed. The third potential Diamond sponsorship is being negotiated later this month (September).

Intel has paid half of the 2024 renewal and approved the payment of the other half, for a total of 100.000 €. 

We will start updating the list of actual sponsors in November, so that mariadb.org will reflect the actual sponsorship status. 

On a side note, we still get caught up in the  added bureaucracy of the “Know Your Customer” type, which requires our continued attention.

2.2 Openness / Contributions

With support from Sergei Golubchik, our Chief Contribution Officer Andrew Hutchings normalised the GitHub branch structure to use “main”. We’ve based our policy on a new branch each time for a new release (see blog Start of Life for MariaDB 11.6 from 5 Jun 2024) and did a poll asking for community preferences (MariaDB Server GitHub branches: Have your say). Our conclusion was that we should conform with the industry standard “main” naming practice (MariaDB Server GitHub branches: Moving to “main”). Finally, this was implemented and announced (MariaDB Server is “main” by default).

Our quarterly contribution statistics (also by Andrew Hutchings), MariaDB Contribution Statistics, July 2024, noted progress: We have contributions from almost twice as many non-MariaDB organisations as last quarter. The more varied our contribution sources, the better.

MariaDB has for the thirteenth year been part of Google Summer of Code (see https://summerofcode.withgoogle.com/programs/2024/organizations/mariadb). We mentor six successful projects which we expect to merge in the near future into MariaDB Server.

We highlighted performance contributions in How Intel helps MariaDB become even faster.

Several interesting contributions came to MariaDB Vector (see item 2.5). 

Based on more stable finances, we have recruited Danish MariaDB veteran Kristian Nielsen as Chief Architect, Replication. He was one of the first developers working on MariaDB in 2009. He has been in contact with Monty over the years and was now able for recruitment. We are happy for the recruitment for several reasons. First, he is the expert on MariaDB Replication, a key strength area of MariaDB Server. Second, he has strong open source values and explicitly wanted to work for MariaDB Foundation. He has for years worked with the MariaDB Server community from outside MariaDB plc and MariaDB Foundation, which gives us invaluable experience in validating our working processes from a contributor perspective. He describes his joining MariaDB Foundation in his 5 Aug 2024 blog entry Starting as Chief Architect Replication with MariaDB Foundation.  

Side note: The urgent items raised in BoD meetings 1/2024 and 2/2024 related to the future of the MariaDB Knowledge Base (documentation) were analysed by Andrew Hutchings and Vicentiu Ciorbaru within a working day and resolved within minutes, once we got access to the production environment. The knowledge base was incurring frequent timeouts and what appeared like server crashes. There was also a very high loading time for pages. The issues are now resolved.

2.3 Adoption progress

We announced the upcoming MariaDB ServerFest Berlin 17 Sep 2024, selecting presentations and structuring the day according to the work mentioned in the later item 4 (MariaDB Server Positioning Recommendation). Also, we plan a MariaDB Day @ OpenSource India in Bengaluru on 25 Oct 2024. 

To improve our adoption in China, we are in discussions with the OpenAtom Foundation https://www.openatom.org/about (“The OpenAtom Foundation is a non-profit organisation dedicated to promoting the development of the global open source community. It was founded in Beijing in June 2020.“). A first step is to engage with their “Google Summer of Code” equivalent, called “competitions”. We have invited OpenAtom representatives to present MariaDB related “competitions” in Bengaluru on 25 October 2024.

Work is also underway to have fresh MariaDB 10.11 LTS builds to be part of the most successful Chinese Linux distribution openEuler https://www.openeuler.org/en/ – As Wikipedia points out (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EulerOS), “EulerOS is a commercial Linux distribution developed by Huawei based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux to provide an operating system for server and cloud environments. Its open-source community version is known as openEuler, a multi-kernel project incubated and operated by the OpenAtom Foundation.” Active collaboration is already happening in our Zulip chat server stream https://mariadb.zulipchat.com/#narrow/stream/451209-MariaDB-in-openEuler.

Database benchmarking authority Mark Callaghan (who spent 15 years as the tech lead for MySQL at Facebook and Google building great teams that scaled MySQL far beyond expectations) published a new blog Sysbench on a medium server: MariaDB is faster than MySQL in his highly technical, detailed benchmarking blog series on his site smalldatum.blogspot.com. Mark’s findings, in turn, enabled Marko Mäkelä of MariaDB plc to make significant improvements in InnoDB.

We got a positive community response from our  initiative Improving MariaDB support in open source projects.

We happily noted cooperation between two of our sponsors (also present on the board) and highlighted it externally in Case IBM Power 10: A further step for MariaDB Server – humbly claiming that MariaDB Foundation was a bit of an enabler over the years.

There were few events during the summer. That said, Vicentiu Ciorbaru was attending SuseCon24 and FrOsCon, both in Germany.

Release wise, on 12 Aug 2024 we released MariaDB 11.6.1, 11.5.2, 11.4.3, 11.2.5, 11.1.6, 10.11.9, 10.6.19 and 10.5.26 and on 24 Jun 2024 UBI based Docker Official Images, giving a choice of Ubuntu and Red Hat based images.

Evangelist, AI and project manager recruit Robert Silén recorded a vlog series on MariaDB 11.4 LTS features with the CEO, on our YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/@MariaDBFoundation. This is part of an overall effort to increase information flow regarding new features developed in MariaDB Server, differentiating us from MySQL Server.

As for openness in general, we notice with pleasure that MariaDB plc is publicly showing commitment to open source, by releasing MaxScale version 21.06 under the GPL, as witnessed in a blog entry by Johan Wikman, main developer of MaxScale.

On a negative note, MariaDB dropped one notch from 14 in Aug to 15 in Sep on DB Ranking (https://db-engines.com/en/ranking). This was expected, and needs action, which we invite all board members to participate in – in particular from MariaDB plc, since it’s their social media accounts that Db-engines count as official.. We plan the work on that to be channelled through the discussion in items 4 and 5. 

2.4 The state of MariaDB Vector initiative

On 29 Jul 2024, we were ready for the key announcement of the first MariaDB Vector release  – Finally here: MariaDB Vector Preview! This was a big effort, with Sergei Golubchik of MariaDB plc and Chief Development Officer Vicentiu Ciorbaru of MariaDB Foundation being the main architects. That said, the level of contribution from Amazon got to new levels, particularly through the work of Hugo Wen. Robert Silén highlighted this in a blog Amazon contributes to MariaDB Vector.

We’re happy to note that we got Vector contributions also from our long term sponsor Intel. See Intel improving the performance of MariaDB Vector.

We were positively surprised to note the “embarrassingly high” level of performance of MariaDB Vector in Approximate Nearest Neighbour benchmarks, as Sergei Golubchik blogged about in How Fast Is MariaDB Vector? 

Vectors were noted in the press and by community, at least as follows:

We are keeping public track of the state of MariaDB Vector in https://mariadb.org/projects/mariadb-vector/.

3. Next steps now that EU sister foundation is established 

Background: We have two reasons why we established the EU sister foundation Open SQL Foundation sr. and thus have a legal presence in the EU. One is to be able to apply for EU grants, both from EU and individual EU member states. Another is to simplify bureaucracy and payments, primarily by moving our EU contractors and employees to the EU foundation.

As for the grants, we started a first search for EU grants. First attempts with Jean Paul Smets of Nexedi and with ICANN did not succeed. However, we are waiting for the sovereign fund to reopen and looking for more in the autumn.

As for the bureaucracy, we are now in the process of establishing an operational relationship between MariaDB Foundation and Open SQL Foundation sr. The EU foundation now has acquired the rights to pay salaries. We want to move at least all contractors and employees in Finland to get their salaries paid by the EU Foundation, which requires funds to be transferred from the Delaware foundation to the EU foundation. 

Legal counsel both in the US and EU advises us that we need a board decision to start using the Open SQL Foundation on a day-to-day basis. 

Proposal: The Board decided to move necessary funds from the Delaware foundation to the EU foundation, in order to pay EU contractors and employees, including pending payments still unpaid due to previous lack of funds. 

The transfer is to be handled without undue taxation implications for MariaDB Foundation. If legal counsel indicates that the transfer requires further formal board decisions, the CEO is to request an extraordinary board meeting with the relevant decision items. This meeting is to be conducted over email only.

Decision: Approved

The CEO kindly asked the Board members to make themselves available for such an email board meeting, should it be necessary, likely within September.

4. Decision: Board Composition Changes Related To Attendance

As noted on https://mariadb.org/board-member-expectations/#board-composition-changes each meeting is supposed to have an agenda item “Decision: Board Composition Changes Related To Attendance”. We haven’t had that so far in 2024.

The same page continues:

At this agenda item, the meeting can change members to be observers, and former observers to become full members. These changes are to be made according to the Board’s best judgement on a case by case basis. This is to be done without changes to the By-laws, as to voting members out and electing new board members.

The CEO shall 

  • alert the Board to the existence of board members which haven’t attended the two past meetings, 
  • personally approach any repeatedly absent board members in order to try to verify that they can attend the upcoming meeting

For the four board meetings 2023 and two board meetings 2024, we have the following Observer absentee statistics: 

  • Mark Stockford, ServiceNow – absent 1/2023, 3/2023, 4/2023, 1/2024, 2/2024 
  • Serguei Beloussov, Constructor – absent 4/2023, 1/2024, 2/2024

The Board members have no frequent absentees:

  • Barry Abrahamson, Automattic – absent 4/2023, 2/2024
  • Todd Boyd, IBM – absent 2/2023, 1/2024
  • Michael Widenius – absent 2/2024
  • Espen Håkonsen – absent 4/2023
  • Sean Xiang Peng, Alibaba – absent 4/2023

Result: Mark Stockford to be delisted as Observer from next meeting 4/2024.

Serguei Beloussov is to be contacted and requested to participate in the next meeting 4/2024. 

5. Discussion of MariaDB Server Positioning Recommendation for plc

The CEO sent the Board and Observers a ten-step recommendation prepared by MariaDB Foundation staff, for discussion with plc, about the positioning of MariaDB Server.

The CEO solicits active input from individual board members, primarily in creative discussions during the rest of September.

Paul O’Brien representing MariaDB plc welcomed the positioning work and noted that the current recommendation is already based on extensive discussions between the plc and Foundation. Several other board members noted their interest for 1on1 discussions with MariaDB Foundation.

6. Discussion of MariaDB Server Strategy and Roadmap

In discussions with MariaDB plc, we have identified the need for a top-level vision for the roadmap of MariaDB Server. One could use the word Strategy, even if it is a word for which people have diverging associations. 

MariaDB Foundation has previously escalated individual Jira items (eg. “the top ten most important community feature requests”) for discussion with plc. The logic has been to request plc developer attention to functionality desirable from a community perspective. 

However, Jira item discussions focus on individual trees rather than forests. Moreover, constructive tree level input is hard to solicit from many of the Board Members, Observers and community users not intimately familiar with the product.

Hence, we are launching a process to come with a similar recommendation or wish list for MariaDB plc, as the “Positioning Recommendation”, but in the area of product development and the roadmap. We have identified a few “forests”, 

  • Product Strategy for MariaDB Vector
  • Product Strategy for Migrations
  • Product Strategy for MySQL compatibility
  • Product Strategy for Oracle compatibility
  • Product Strategy for Catalogs
  • Product Strategy for Stability, Performance, Ease of Use

There may be further “forests” very close to MariaDB Server, where MariaDB Foundation may also be able to contribute, such as

  • Product Strategy for Connectors
  • Product Strategy for Column Store
  • Product Strategy for Galera 
  • Product Strategy for MaxScale GPL
  • Product Strategy for Cloud Native

Paul O’Brien as the CEO of MariaDB plc also welcomed this product strategy initiative, noting that the interests of MariaDB Foundation are very close with those of MariaDB plc. 

The CEO solicited active input from individual board members, primarily in creative discussions during the rest of September, in combination with the discussions on Marketing / Positioning. The request was well received.

7. Board Meetings 2024 and 2025

Upcoming board meetings, all on Wednesdays 16:00-17:00 EET

  • Wed 27 Nov 2024

Meeting proposals for 2025, in line with 2024

  • Wed 26 Feb 2025
  • Wed 21 May 2025
  • Wed 3 Sep 2025
  • Wed 26 Nov 2025

Decision: Board members have time during September to raise concerns on the 2025 dates; after that, MariaDB Foundation will send out calendar invites based on the above dates, which have been picked to be as similar as possible to the 2024 dates.