Tag: Sponsoring

Why does Intel sponsor the MariaDB Foundation? I had the opportunity to interview Steve Shaw, Principal Engineer at Intel and a Board Member at MariaDB Foundation.

I strongly urge you to look at the 09:34 long video on YouTube – Steve is well articulated and a pleasure to listen to. Still, here is a glimpse of what he goes into:

1. MariaDB Server is incredibly popular software. Just the Docker image alone has had more than a billion downloads. The majority of MariaDB installations run on Intel servers and developers coding on Intel laptops and desktops. Intel wants to show commitment to MariaDB users getting the best experience built-in.
2. The open source business model is shifting from funding through enterprise features and support to managed services. With this shift a lot of open source is becoming fully Free and therefore a Foundation type approach funded by sponsorship is essential so that the software can be independent of a particular managed service – but it only works if partners such as Intel commit to sponsor the development of this underlying software.
3. With this new model Intel can collaborate with like minded people and business. Contributions are not just code – have a look at our blog about non-code contributions by Intel.