Category Archives: Community
We recently asked the community a simple but important question:
What is the main source of the MariaDB Server you use?
The answers provide a very interesting snapshot of how MariaDB is consumed in the real world today—and, perhaps more importantly, how different installation methods reflect different use cases and priorities.
We got 2,373 replies on the poll!
Let’s take a closer look and try to understand these results.
Linux Distribution Repositories Still Lead
The most common answer, at just over 25%, is installation from Linux distribution repositories.
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Preview releases are among the clearest ways an open-source community can shape the future of a database before it becomes a production reality. They give users early access to new features, a chance to validate upgrade paths, and an opportunity to catch issues while the change is still inexpensive.
In our recent survey, we asked a simple question:
“Have you used a MariaDB preview release?”
The responses tell an interesting story about awareness, experimentation, and where the MariaDB community still sees friction.
Compared with the last polls, we had a slightly smaller number of participants.
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Continue reading “What Our Survey Says About MariaDB Preview Releases”
Percona’s new 2026 benchmark report is interesting because it puts several MySQL-family releases on the same graphs and shares a public repository for the test harness. That openness is welcome. But after reading both the article and the published scripts, I do not think the post supports broad conclusions about “ecosystem performance,” and I especially do not think it represents an adequately tuned MariaDB, worthy of a neutral comparison.
Versions
The versions chosen for MariaDB are already a subject of debate. MySQL 9.6.0 (the latest Innovation Release) and MariaDB 12.1.2 (a rolling release) were used.
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One of the things I really like about open source is that a project is never only about the software.
Yes, code is important. Very important. But a project like MariaDB exists and grows because of people. People who contribute code, of course, but also people who help users, review bugs, write blog posts, speak at events, answer questions, test new features, build tools, and share knowledge with others.
This is exactly why I’m very happy to announce the MariaDB Foundation Sea Lion Champions program.
It’s a new initiative to recognize the people who help make the MariaDB ecosystem stronger.
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Continue reading “Know a MariaDB champion? Submit a nomination”
I came across an excellent paper by the Linux Foundation. In it I find solid economical evidence for a very fundamental idea: contributions are the life-blood of an open source project.
Contributions in the broader sense (code, documentation, quality assurance, marketing, education, financial support) are central to every project. Open source or not. Giving users what they need and want is what makes any project appealing. It’s just that with open source, the cost to procuring these is not that directly attached to the actual use. So, there is a gap to cross between passive use and active participation.
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Before I share my takeaway from this MariaDB observability poll, I would like to thank all participants and highlight that these recent polls are very popular, and your participation makes us happy.
That said, we recently asked the MariaDB community the following question:
Which observability tools do you use for MariaDB?
I like polls like this one.
Not because they are perfect. They are not.
Not because they replace real field experience. They do not.
But because sometimes they confirm, very clearly, what many of us already see in practice.
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If you’ve been around the MariaDB community for a while, you can probably feel it already: things are moving in the right direction.
And no, I’m not talking about one vanity metric, one lucky spike, or one noisy social post.
I’m talking about a broader trend.
The latest Adoption Index data shows something I really like to see: not one lucky spike, but multiple signals moving in the right direction at the same time.
Sometimes people want one number.
One chart. One KPI. One neat little story.
But open source projects do not work like that.
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Continue reading “MariaDB Keeps Climbing: Community, Adoption, and Momentum”
We recently asked the MariaDB community a simple question:
Where do you run MariaDB most in production?
The responses give a useful snapshot of how MariaDB is deployed today across our community:
The big takeaway: MariaDB remains strongly infrastructure-aware
The clearest signal from this poll is that MariaDB is still most commonly run in environments where users want a high degree of control over the underlying infrastructure.
The top two clearly defined deployment models, on-prem VMs and bare metal, account for the largest share of visible responses.
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Continue reading “Where does the Community run most MariaDB in production – results from the poll”