First Steps in Contributing to MariaDB

At MariaDB Day in February in Brussels, VP Engineering Vicențiu Ciurbaru delivered an inspiring presentation titled “Launch Your Open Source Career: First Steps in Contributing to MariaDB.”

In the spirit of the recent positive stats on new contributions to MariaDB, let me recap Vicentiu’s tips for anyone looking to make their first contribution. 

Contributing to MariaDB is not only about writing code—it’s about joining a vibrant community where every contribution, big or small, drives innovation. We hope newcomers can see a tangible path to getting involved.

How to start contributing? 

“Amen” statement for committing transactions

Every once in a while a truly inspiring contribution comes to us at MariaDB. Today’s timely contribution was from Sigma, and their inspiring contribution was in pull request 3937 which adds the AMEN statement for committing transactions. The need for harmonizing cultural norms with SQL standards is largely under explored aspect of engineering and here seems to be a good a place to start as any.

As described:

This pull request introduces a new statement, amen, which serves as an alternative to the traditional commit command in MariaDB. The motivation behind this change is to provide a more thematic and culturally resonant way to conclude transactions, reflecting the religious connotation of the name “MariaDB”.

The Path to Code Contributions in MariaDB Server

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.