Category Archives: Stories
Well over two years ago was the last time the MariaDB Foundation staff had met. That was at FOSDEM, in February 2020. Thus, no big surprise, one of our topmost goals for 2022 was to have a staff meeting, face to face. It’s about time to oil the social relationships, to work together without connection issues, to be reminded of how work and life can be in a world where Covid isn’t the top issue.
In other words: we planned a post-pandemic Staff Meeting.
The outcome was different.
Choosing the venue
But let us start from the beginning, from the original euforia.
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The lifeblood of MariaDB Foundation is contributions. Our trinity consists of the fundamental values of Adoption (of MariaDB Server), Openness (of the MariaDB Server codebase), and Continuity (of our operations and activities), all of which are centered around MariaDB Server. We rely on our financial sponsors to finance our activities, but the financial value of the code contributions we receive outshines the total sponsorship payments. That has been the case every year since MariaDB Server was launched.
Giving recognition to code contributions
The MariaDB Foundation has not given proper recognition to this fact, of the value of our contributions.
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Our Board Meeting in April 2022 elected two seasoned new voting board members. One of them is Xiang Peng (Sean), Director, RDS Open Source Databases at Alibaba Cloud. I had the pleasure of having a Fireside Chat with him, which we recorded and put up on YouTube. Read on for his recommendations for MariaDB Foundation in China.
A Man With the Right CV for MariaDB Foundation
Sean, as he calls himself for those of us who have problems remembering, reading or writing his real name 彭祥, is a great resource for MariaDB Foundation.
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Continue reading “China Has Great Potential for MariaDB Server”
On the last day of the year, let me share a few thoughts in hindsight on a year that didn’t turn out as anyone expected. The outcome: Not everyone was as lucky as MariaDB Foundation. The pandemic takes longer than expected, and mixes the deck of winners and losers. Sure, most of us lose, a lot. But the forced break can provide lessons for a better post-pandemic life (and business).
Picture: Sanna Marin, PM of Finland, CC BY 4.0 Laura Kotila/Statsrådets kansli 2019 via Wikimedia Commons
Two early pandemic blog entries in March
Background: In March this year (which sometimes feels like yesterday, sometimes like ages ago), I wrote two blog entries about the strange situation caused by the Corona pandemic.
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You might have heard the story of how we picked a sea-lion as our logo. Now that this lovely beast has been with us for a while, we think it’s high time to give it a name and of course we turn to our wonderful community for suggestions.
The rules are simple: complete this form, telling us what you think we should name the sea lion and why. Later, Maria Widenius will pick her favorite from the submissions, and the winner will get a collection of MariaDB t-shirts and other swag, an artwork by Maria, and of course eternal fame!
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Introduction
Hi, my name is Kartik Soneji, and I am a second year student at Thadomal Shahani Engineering College, Mumbai. I have been programming since the age of 13. I started out with Java, then learnt a little C++ before diving head first into web development with HTML, CSS and JavaScript. I also programmed a bit in Python and Rust to see what all the hype was about.
My primary motivation to contribute to the open source community is because I strongly believe in the idea that software is free, to copy, modify and study.
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Continue reading “A GSoC internship with the MariaDB Foundation”
Time flies!
It certainly doesn’t feel like 25 years ago that Monty released MySQL. At that time, I thought it was a bit redundant of Monty to create Yet Another Database, the world was full of them already. But MySQL turned out to become the database for Internet, growing hand-in-hand with PHP (and Perl and Python).
When MySQL was created 1995, Monty’s oldest daughter My was six years old. When the first MariaDB was released 2009, My’s little sister Maria was one year younger, five years old.
One innovation over the other databases was the license model.
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My favourite running track is full! Full of newbie runners, young and old. Mostly running alone, sometimes in pairs – but all following social distancing.
Social distancing can be coupled with emotional closeness. That’s at least what Sauli Niinistö propagates, the President of Finland. In line with these two phenomena – emotional closeness between isolated colleagues, and the boom of running as a source of energy during lockdown – we are launching the Solstice Run.
We want to inspire non-runners to run
As initiators, we want to inspire others to start running.
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