MariaDB Server University Program

The demand for DBAs, developers and software engineers knowledgeable in MariaDB Server is high. The supply isn’t.

This is something we plan to fix, with the MariaDB Server University Program, for which we are now inviting universities to participate in, and users of MariaDB Server to sponsor.

Mind the Gap

Closing the gap between supply and demand is in the interest of several stakeholders:

Universities.

Press Release: MariaDB Server University Program Launch

Indonesia to Lead World Wide University Database Education Initiative 

Yogyakarta, Indonesia, 6 Sep 2019: MariaDB Foundation and APTISI (the Association of Private Higher Education Institutions Indonesia) collaborate to launch the MariaDB Server University Programme, providing free education material for universities across Indonesia and worldwide. 

The need for database education in Indonesia

With millions of university level students in the IT sector alone, Indonesia needs a comprehensive education programme for databases, for database administrators, for developers of applications, and for developers of database technology. Open Source databases are ideal from an education perspective, providing professors and students with the technology and licenses needed, out of the box, without having to enter bureaucratic agreements.

Progress on Pull Request Processing

In his blog post “On Contributions, Pride and Cockiness ” in May, MariaDB Foundation CEO Kaj Arnö spoke of a renewed focus on MariaDB Server pull requests. Processing community pull requests in good time is a key part of our mission, but we’d been falling behind, and receiving justifiable criticism. At the time of that article, there were 167 open pull requests, with many open for far too long, and contributors were frustrated.

We set out two end goals:

  • Reduce backlog of open pull requests
  • Motivate contributors to make more contributions

There’s been no noticeable uptick in contributions since then, but we’ve made good progress in reducing the number of open pull requests. …

Board Meeting 1/2019

MariaDB Foundation has an upcoming board meeting soon. Let me grab the opportunity to publicly share more about the Foundation Board, who is on it, and what the board decided in the previous board meeting, Wed 17 Apr 2019.

We meet over Zoom, after first setting a date and a time. With board members from California in the West to Shenzhen in the East, finding a time of day is always painful. We usually end up with a Californian morning, US East coast mid day, European evening, and Chinese late night. Last meeting, everyone was present, which is great, but timing was an ordeal in particular for the Chinese board members, with a meeting that started at midnight.

On Contributions, Pride and Cockiness

At MariaDB Foundation, we are proud of MariaDB Server getting plenty of contributions. But we don’t want to get cocky, so here is an update about where we stand, and what we want to make happen.

First, we have shown our contribution pride in several places. On 15 February 2019, I tweeted

Repeating: On code contributions, #MariaDB beats #MySQL 1009 to 247: We have over a thousand (1009) closed pull requests on GitHub (and 179 open), MySQL has 247 closed (1 open).

In our Annual Report 2018, we spent several pages, talking about pull requests and patches, showing code contribution statistics. …

The Story of our Sea Lion

Why a sea lion? That’s a question we get every now and then, most recently at FOSDEM.

Here is the story:

Our Founder Monty likes animals in the sea. For MySQL, he picked a dolphin, after swimming with them in the Florida Keys. For the MariaDB sea lion, there was a similar encounter.

It happened when Monty and his older daughter My were snorkeling on one of the islands in the Galapagos. Something big, brown and fast suddenly appeared at an arm’s distance, laughing in their faces.

FOSDEM Reflections / MySQL – MariaDB DevRoom

What a great place for informal interactions, strengthening the network, and hearing the latest news from the grapevine! Last weekend 1.-3. Feb 2019, over 8000 developers met in Brussels for FOSDEM 2019.

For the overall atmosphere, take a look at this 1:05 long video by Sofia Ek.

MariaDB Foundation was present with six staff people (Ian Gilfillan, Vicențiu Ciorbaru, Teodor Ionita, Robert Bîndar, Zak Greant and myself) and two board members (Eric Herman from Booking.com and Serg Golubchik from MariaDB Corporation).

A Word from the Incoming CEO

It is my pleasure and honour to join the MariaDB Foundation as its new CEO from 1 Feb 2019. Following MariaDB closely since its inception, I welcome the opportunity to be focusing completely on adoption, collaboration and free open development of MariaDB Server. I joined MySQL AB in 2001 and worked in various leadership positions, notably as VP Community Relations, a task I continued at Sun Microsystems and, briefly, Oracle. A co-founder of SkySQL and an executive at MariaDB Corporation, I have now been part of the Open Source ecosystem for nearly two decades. The journey continues to fascinate me.