Category: Foundation
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MariaDB, an Open Source Alternative
We live in a world where national interests intertwine with IT vendor interests. Interest is currently booming in “European Alternatives“. I’m happy to note that MariaDB Server is unaffected by considerations related to protectionism. In fact, choosing Open Source protects the user – an individual, an organisation, or a government – from protectionism itself.
Licensing prevails over national interests
Politicians come and go. National interests prevail a bit longer than individual politicians.Companies also evolve, get acquired and merged across national […]
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The Accidental Queen of the Database Dominion – Month one
Exactly one month ago, I found myself stepping into the role of CEO at MariaDB Foundation. It was a bit like being handed the keys to a beloved old ship and being told, “Don’t worry, it mostly steers itself… unless there’s a storm. Or a kraken. Or a GitHub issue.”
As someone whose surname gives away a bit of context, it’s both an honor and a deeply personal journey to be entrusted with stewarding this next chapter. I used to […]
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A Conversation with Michal Schorm: MariaDB in Red Hat and Fedora
In a recent conversation, I had the pleasure of speaking with Michal Schorm, the maintainer of MariaDB packages for Red Hat and Fedora – and newly elected Observer on the MariaDB Foundation Board. Our discussion covered his role, the current state of MariaDB in these distributions, and ideas for future improvements.
The Role of a MariaDB Package Maintainer
Michal is responsible for ensuring that the MariaDB source code is compiled and made available as installable packages for Fedora, CentOS Stream, […]
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This month in MariaDB Foundation: Feb 2025
“The act of measuring disturbs the system and changes its state.” is a quote attributed to Werner Heisenberg. While I am uncertain about whether Heisenberg ever uttered those exact words, I am certain that the quote “What doesn’t get measured, doesn’t get managed” is a management adage that gets a lot of negative publicity, deservedly so.
Metrics Not Considered Harmful
Yet, metrics can be helpful. MariaDB Foundation is far from overmeasuring pointy-haired-boss numbers, and in February, we made an attempt […]
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Report from the Board
Openness, Adoption, Continuity: You’ve heard me repeating our mantra like a broken record. Today is the next episode – and the theme du jour is about our Board Meetings, which we have minuted publicly on https://mariadb.org/bodminutes/ since October 2020.
At last Wednesday’s Board Meeting, we made quite a few important decisions – let me draw your attention to them in this separate blog entry.
Ex officio: Michael Widenius and Sergei Golubchik
First, we properly documented the special role of our founding […]
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This month in MariaDB Foundation: Jan 2025
Focus, focus, focus! That’s the mantra of any successful organisation. With great input from our Board, we’ve managed to condense our strategic planning for 2025 into six goals.
Refiguring the process – from descriptive to prescriptive
Our goal setting started from mapping out our activities 2024. I asked myself: “How can we describe what we do on one page?”. There were 38 activities – think “Scrum Epics” – in 6 areas.
Guess what? That’s too many. No Board member is […]
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Register for MariaDB Day Sessions 1 Feb 2025
Time to sign up! The schedule is out for our first 2025 MariaDB Day, in Brussels 1 Feb 2025.
And what a schedule it is, with insightful presentations by top-brass presenters.
The latest new features
First of all, this is the opportunity to get the big picture of the latest new features in MariaDB.
AI, LLM, and Vectors
Second, this is the place to get the latest on AI, LLM and vectors in MariaDB
Contributions to code
Third, contributions are […]
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MariaDB highlights in 2024: Vectors, K1, and contributions
New Year’s Eve is when everyone takes stock of the year that has passed. At MariaDB Foundation, we’re no different.
The technical highlight: MariaDB Vector
It’s not hard to pick the technical MariaDB highlight of the year: It’s MariaDB Vector.
No big surprise there: The biggest new thing in IT is AI. AI is getting mainstream. Mainstream applications need databases. Databases need stability, performance, ease of use. And low cost.
The solution: MariaDB Server. It’s relational. It’s standard. It’s Open […]