Category Archives: Contributions
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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I wanted to share with you all some statistics on the incoming community contributions for the MariaDB server in the last year or so. And some of my thoughts looking at the data.
I’ve been quietly working on scripting some of my daily routines using the github CLI and the Jira REST API. Thanks to a question by Anna, the visionary MariaDB Foundation CEO, I’ve also created some scripts to fetch and summarize statistics on the incoming community contributions pull requests.
A picture’s worth a thousand words. So here we go:
This depicts the community pull requests opened or closed each month (the top graph).
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Continue reading “The Rising Tide of Community Contributions to MariaDB Server”
Inspired by my VERY long presentation on the topic at FOSDEM26 I thought I’d say a couple of words on how the contribution process works.
Contributing changes to MariaDB server is easy because it follows industry best practices: it’s using “normal” GitHub pull requests. Note that I’m working for the MariaDB Foundation. As such, “normal” for me is doing everything in the open, for everybody to see and participate. And all of the communication around the contribution (including the code review) is happening in that same pull request and is public. Until the intended end of the process: merging the pull request into the repository.
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Continue reading “The MariaDB contribution process: a step by step guide.”
Couple of weeks ago we’ve announced a poll for the Top external contribution of 2025. Thank you all that voted for the time you took to do so.
The vote was organized in two categories:
- Organizations
- Individuals
We are extremely happy to share that the winner of 2025 Top Contributor to MariaDB award.
In this section the Winner is:
MDEV-36737 Research and Estimation for Adapting VIDEX to MariaDB!
Congratulations to ByteDance and Haibo Yang (YoungHypo) and Rong Kang (kr11)!
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Continue reading “And The Winners Of The Inaugural Top External Contributor To MariaDB Award are …”
It’s the time of the year to look back and reflect. In line with the holiday spirit, we’d like to highlight some of the MariaDB Server contributions from 2025 that the team found particularly inspiring and interesting, and to say thank you to everyone who submitted them.
At the end of the post, we invite the community to help us recognise the most impactful external contributions of the year.
- MDEV-36737 Research and Estimation for Adapting VIDEX to MariaDB: thank you, Haibo Yang (YoungHypo) and Rong Kang (kr11) from ByteDance for this very interesting contribution.
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Continue reading “A Year in Review: Notable External Contributions to MariaDB Server in 2025”
We recently announced the winners of the MariaDB Python Hackathon. We sat down with the Innovation track first place winners to learn more about the team and their submission.
Aakanksha Singh and Mihir Phalke developed an Adaptive Query Optimizer for MariaDB Vector, addressing performance challenges in vector similarity search operations. They were interviewed by Robert Silén, Community Advocate and Kaj Arnö, Executive Chairman of MariaDB Foundation. For the recorded interview, watch it on Youtube, or read the interview below.
Introducing Mihir and Aakanksha
Mihir: My name is Mihir Phalke and alongside me is Aakanksha Singh.
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We recently announced the winners of the MariaDB Hackathon at the BangPypers meetup in Bengaluru. We are now interviewing the winner submissions, continuing with the Integration track second place winner.
We sat down with Ria Kulkarni and Revanth Sreeram Ambati who developed a Dagster integration for MariaDB, bringing modern data orchestration capabilities to the MariaDB ecosystem. They were interviewed by Robert Silén, Community Advocate and Kaj Arnö, Executive Chairman of MariaDB Foundation.
For the recorded interview, watch it on Youtube, or read the summary below.
First, let us repeat a short introduction on the topic of data orchestration that we also shared in the interview with the Airflow Integration track winner.
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Continue reading “Dagster integration for MariaDB – 2nd place in MariaDB BangPypers Hackathon 2025”