Tag Archives: code contributions
MariaDB Vector preview was recently released, bringing much awaited Vector Search functionality to MariaDB Server. One of the major open source contributors to MariaDB Vector has been Amazon. To share the excitement and get an inside view about what it’s like to contribute to MariaDB Server, I had a chat with software engineer Hugo Wen on the Amazon RDS team.
Hugo’s contributions to MariaDB Vector
Hugo Wen’s work on vector similarity search in MariaDB and MySQL started when Amazon’s leadership identified Vector Search functionality as a critical addition and decided to invest Amazon RDS team’s time on contributing to MariaDB Vector.
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A healthy ecosystem around MariaDB Server involves an active community. Lots of happy code contributors cause fast development of new functionality, as well as increased adoption by users. Users see the vibrancy of the contributor space as a sign of health, rightfully so. Hence, preventive health care “with daily exercise and good eating habits” is high on the agenda of MariaDB Foundation.
But in practice, improving MariaDB’s habits around code development is about as easy as improving individual life habits in general, particularly if you are under public scrutiny. Let me here share a few thoughts on our progress, and solicit some input.
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We are in October, which means it has been 4 months since the last metrics report. It is, therefore, time for another quarterly metrics report (plus a bit more). The extra month was to allow for an announcement which is a prerequisite for this post, and it also means we are more or less aligned to real quarters. The major changes to this will come in the second half of this post, we have lots of additional data for pull requests. With that, let’s get started.
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Continue reading “MariaDB Contribution Statistics, October 2023”
The Google Summer of Code is a fantastic program that pairs new contributors up with mentors and pays them to work on open source projects.
MariaDB has been part of Google Summer of Code for 10 years and we are happy to announce that we are officially part of the program this year, too!
Traditionally, GSoC has only been open to university students, but now it is available to anyone! I’m a big fan of this, because talented people who do not have the opportunity to go to university can get involved. It also benefits those who are working towards a change into a career in software development.
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I have been working for the MariaDB Foundation as the Chief Contributions Officer for a couple of weeks and it is fantastic being part of the MariaDB family again. Part of my job is to help the community massage pull requests into something that we can merge. I am, however, finding that one of the worst parts of my job is having to say “no” to contributions that clearly took a lot of time and effort on the part of the developer.
Contributions could be turned down or at least will require changes for a number of reasons.
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Continue reading “The Path to Code Contributions in MariaDB Server”
Would you like to contribute to the MariaDB Server code base, its feature set, its quality? Here’s what you can do to help – in other words, here’s our Contribution Wish List
Scratching your own itch
The assumption around code contributions is usually that the code contributor extends the product in a direction that corresponds to the contributor’s own needs, which in turn are close to the needs of other users. “Scratching your own itch” is the phrase commonly used.
Some itches are more for the common good
That said, we have also been approached by potential providers of contributions that would take a more general approach.
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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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