[HN Gopher] MariaDB to go public at $672M valuation
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       MariaDB to go public at $672M valuation
        
       Author : ashvardanian
       Score  : 308 points
       Date   : 2022-02-01 15:42 UTC (7 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (mariadb.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (mariadb.com)
        
       | mandarax8 wrote:
       | There is something wrong about the website of the company that
       | bought the shares: https://angelpond.com/
        
       | tarkin2 wrote:
       | So a distrust of Oracle made someone more than half a billion?
       | Those Oracle lawyers actually did create economic value then. Who
       | would have thunk it.
        
         | hodgesrm wrote:
         | You could also say it's a big market and there is room for
         | multiple winners. Not everything is a monopoly.
        
         | galosh wrote:
         | There is some deeply perverse insight in this comment and I
         | love it. The principle seems to apply quite generally across
         | much of modern tech. Where are the viable contenders for Google
         | products built on a platform of.. counter-reputation? This
         | concept needs a name
        
           | speedcoder wrote:
           | "Bait fork-and-switch"?
        
           | Bjartr wrote:
           | Seems like plain old competition to me.
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | dabfiend19 wrote:
         | distrust of Oracle is Mongo's main source of income. and it's a
         | ~$25B company now.
        
       | bruce343434 wrote:
       | huh? What kind of return on investment can one expect from a
       | database engine stock(??) Why would anyone buy it?
        
         | MikeKusold wrote:
         | MongoDB IPO'd for ~$30/share. They peaked in November at $590,
         | and are currently at $409.
         | 
         | If you invested you would have made a nice chunk of change.
         | MongoDB does have a hosting service though which could be
         | driving a decent chunk of revenue.
        
         | abirch wrote:
         | With MariaDB you can centralize your block chain.
        
         | chronogram wrote:
         | MariaDB sells MariaDB Enterprise and MariaDB as a service
         | (SkySQL).
        
         | sdan wrote:
         | SPAC sponsors and mariadb investors get to cashout massively,
         | while the SPAC drops 70% in the next year. A tale as old as
         | time.
        
       | donohoe wrote:
       | Wow, like that must be roughly 300 Wordl's in money.
        
       | uvdn7 wrote:
       | My impression is that MariaDB has good ARM support out of the
       | box. I am not sure about ARM support status of other popular DBs.
        
         | spmurrayzzz wrote:
         | Mongo has done a significant amount of work to optimize for
         | ARM. And from my own testing, that work has paid off both on
         | bare metal as well as cloud (specifically, the AWS Graviton2
         | instance type).
        
         | 9thbit wrote:
         | We tried using it as a drop in for MySQL docker containers on
         | new ARM Macs and it is very slow, nearly as slow as emulating
         | an x86 MySQL container.
        
           | michaelcampbell wrote:
           | Docker on Mac used to have horrible I/O inefficiencies, which
           | would cripple a DB I'd reckon. Is that still the case?
        
             | edgyquant wrote:
             | Seems to be for me, yes, running a simple yarn install
             | takes 10-15 minutes inside docker while it takes 2-3
             | minutes tops just using the terminal
        
       | mikece wrote:
       | A public company will have a board of directors who set the
       | direction of the company; as such what is to stop the board from
       | directing that the license be changed?
        
         | ComradePhil wrote:
         | I am sure they'll change their license, like some others have
         | done:
         | 
         | https://www.confluent.io/blog/license-changes-confluent-plat...
         | https://blog.timescale.com/blog/building-open-source-busines...
         | 
         | I don't think there is any place for GPL in databases and
         | similar software, specially if it is to be built and run by
         | for-profit companies.
        
           | mikece wrote:
           | I used to be opposed to GPL at moral level have have since
           | changed my mind on this. It makes sense for anything that is
           | essentially infrastructure -- operating systems, web servers,
           | software firewalls -- to be GPL: improvements at this level
           | are rarely something which gives a specific company a
           | competitive advantage. In the cases where it would, however,
           | I like the idea of dual-licensing so that a GPL project (for
           | example: Linux) could be combined with proprietary code
           | without needing to publish the changes. Right now anyone
           | thinking along those lines (Sony, Netflix, Juniper, etc)
           | chooses FreeBSD. In the case of the companies who have chosen
           | FreeBSD for proprietary use they have, in many cases, ended
           | up contributing work back to the parent project if for no
           | other reason than self-interest in making updates to the base
           | OS easier as their custom code remains slim. If Linux had
           | been offering this dual-license option I think the examples
           | above would have chosen Linux and there would have been
           | contributions back to the parent project that aren't there
           | today.
        
             | webmobdev wrote:
             | Yeah, but everything should be AGPL now instead of GPL. The
             | software-as-service fiasco that changes the nature of
             | "distribution" to bypass the open source requirements of
             | licenses like GPL highlighted a loophole that corporates
             | haven't hesitated in exploiting. AGPL has temporarily
             | addressed this. However AGPL needs to go one more step and
             | allow changing the license to plug any future loopholes.
             | Right now, many GPL software cannot be automatically
             | upgraded to AGPL license because we have to get permission
             | from all the contributors to change the license. AGPL needs
             | a clause that allows easy upgradation of the license
             | retrospectively to ensure that the core concept can be
             | defended in future too.
        
         | ergonaught wrote:
         | They cannot change the license for the GPL code for which they
         | do not own copyright, which is everything forked from MySQL
         | proper.
        
         | SloopJon wrote:
         | I always thought of MariaDB as a fork of GPLed MySQL code that
         | is now owned by Oracle. However, I see that MariaDB uses a
         | contributor agreement, and reserves some features for a
         | proprietary(?) enterprise edition.
         | 
         | Do I misunderstand the copyright status of MySQL/MariaDB, or
         | has MariaDB been clever about how it adds features to the GPL
         | core, such that they're not legally derivative works?
        
         | eli wrote:
         | The same thing that stops a sole developer from changing the
         | license?
        
         | eklitzke wrote:
         | All C corporations have a board of directors, not just publicly
         | listed companies. If the BoD wanted to push to change the
         | license they could have done that years ago.
        
         | chrisseaton wrote:
         | Owners of code can always change their licence. Being a public
         | company with a board of directors doesn't change anything.
        
       | JediPig wrote:
       | talking about selling the same product.. TWICE.
        
       | formvoltron wrote:
       | sounds like a short
        
       | glutamate wrote:
       | Have SPACs rebranded as Blank Check Companies?
        
         | slapshot wrote:
         | The other way around. "Blank check companies" have existed for
         | many many years, but were a relatively rare instrument and did
         | very bespoke deals. Most investors never heard of them. In
         | recent years, a standardized deal emerged that became known as
         | a SPAC (and all the recent flavors of the month). If you look
         | in SEC regulations, you'll see references to "blank check
         | companies" all over the place.
        
           | systemvoltage wrote:
           | Interesting. Why are SPACs getting a bad rep? Is it because
           | of the acquisitions of shady companies or is there an
           | underlying issue with the process followed by SPACs?
        
             | sdan wrote:
             | SPAC sponsors get essentially a free money trade when they
             | merge with a company; usually this results in merging with
             | sub-par companies with bad numbers (no revenue or even
             | product usually) so investors can cash out massively
             | without the company really needing to succeed at all
             | 
             | Case in point: most SPACs have fallen anywhere from 50-70%
             | (evtol/lidar/battery companies) over the past year due to
             | the fact that most don't have either a working product or
             | poor numbers
        
       | gw67 wrote:
       | Do you think it will have a lower PS ration than Mongo db?
       | Currently, mongodb is 7$ TTM Sales per Share
        
       | lkxijlewlf wrote:
       | And the cycle continues. Who is going to fork MariaDB now?
        
       | ezekiel68 wrote:
       | This is awesome. And if we don't like what the public company
       | does in 6 months, someone can fork the codebase, call it
       | monikadb, rinse, and repeat in a few years!
        
       | bastardoperator wrote:
       | Mr Widenius, we see you. Good show! Up Next, MyMariaDBSQLMax
        
       | cletus wrote:
       | Whatever else you might think, you can't help but be impressed by
       | someone selling MySQL to Sun for $1 billion, forking it and then
       | taking it public effectively selling it again.
       | 
       | Respect.
        
         | acomjean wrote:
         | I thought Oracle bought it. I think I had to make an account to
         | download something. And I think it was Oracle that bought the
         | MySql user group (I attended a couple meetings) pizza.
         | 
         | I was the interface between Oracle Sales and management at a
         | start up a long time ago. It was weird. They offer technical
         | help to use their API, (so its harder to switch away, I was
         | told by my boss). We were on using on a trial basis. They
         | seemed to want to charge based on CPU speed of the computer
         | installed on. The startup ran out of money...
        
           | e12e wrote:
           | Sun bought mysql, oracle bought Sun.
           | 
           | https://www.e-channelnews.com/sun-microsystems-to-acquire-
           | my...
           | 
           | https://www.oracle.com/corporate/pressrelease/oracle-buys-
           | su...
           | 
           | But it was close 2008 and 2009 I believe.
        
       | jacquesm wrote:
       | Well, at least they won't be selling it to Oracle.
        
       | supperburg wrote:
        
       | cies wrote:
       | Take that SCO^H^H^H Oracle!
       | 
       | Other news:
       | 
       | Adoptium/Temurin is doing FLOSS Java distro under the Eclipse
       | Foundation
       | 
       | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adoptium
        
         | kaba0 wrote:
         | How is Oracle's OpenJDK _not_ FLOSS?
        
           | cies wrote:
           | MySQL is also FLOSS right? It's not about it being FLOSS or
           | not, its about their stewardship of open innovation projects.
           | No surprise that super commercial/ legal heavy company is not
           | great at it.
           | 
           | Not saying I love Goolge, Facebook or even MS these days, but
           | they seem to play it A LOT nicer that Oracle in that regard.
        
             | kaba0 wrote:
             | Doubt. Oracle was the company that did finally open-source
             | java completely, making every single previously paid-only
             | feature found in OracleJDK available for free/libre in
             | OpenJDK, of which they are responsible for 99% of all
             | commits. Also, the language has been doing exceedingly well
             | under their stewardship.
        
       | zibzab wrote:
       | Larry Ellison is _not_ happy today.
       | 
       | Edit: let me explain. Larry bought mysql to save oracle from
       | being outcompeted by a young entrepreneur. Who left after 2 years
       | to create an even more competent DB. To add insult to the injury,
       | this market value is below what they paid for mysql 15 years ago,
       | which makes Larry look incompetent.
        
         | evanelias wrote:
         | Your comment doesn't make sense.
         | 
         | MySQL was originally purchased by Sun, not Oracle. Although
         | Oracle did acquire Innobase Oy (makers of InnoDB, the most
         | popular storage engine in both MySQL and MariaDB) prior to
         | this.
         | 
         | Oracle later purchased Sun, which included other valuable
         | properties (e.g. Java) in addition to MySQL. Naturally this
         | would be a more expensive acquisition than just MySQL itself.
         | 
         | Regardless, the current enterprise value of MySQL (meaning, the
         | MySQL business unit under Oracle) would depend primarily on
         | Oracle's MySQL revenue. This really has no relation whatsoever,
         | in any conceivable way, to the initial listing price of
         | MariaDB's SPAC. These are separate databases with separate
         | userbases, separate cloud DBaaS offerings, separate support
         | contract businesses, etc.
        
         | ashvardanian wrote:
         | That is hilarious. For reference, Sun acquired MySQL AB in
         | February 2008 for $1 billion.
        
           | kerblang wrote:
           | And Oracle bought Sun in 2010; Widenius got mad and created
           | MariaDB the same day, apparently out of spite.
           | 
           | (I don't think any of the characters were particularly
           | ethical, smart or otherwise commendable... they just did what
           | people do)
        
         | 0des wrote:
         | _look_ incompetent?
        
         | imjk wrote:
         | This is a bad take. Oracle today is worth $216B. Over the last
         | 15 years Oracle, under the leadership of Ellison, has grown 5x
         | in value, returning significant shareholder value. I personally
         | very much dislike Oracle and its products, but I have to
         | respect Larry Ellison for his performance as an executive.
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | slim wrote:
         | to be fair, market value should have been obviously much higher
         | when mariadb was not around. I would say his error was tactical
         | : oracle is probably not capable of growing an opensource
         | product which makes that acquisition a bad move
        
       | fullstop wrote:
       | The creator of MySQL named it after his daughter, "My". After it
       | was forked, the fork was named after his other daughter, "Maria".
       | 
       | He has three children, so we've got one more go at this with a
       | MaxDB if needed.
       | 
       | edit: I was wrong -- He already used MaxDB previously. We're out
       | of names.
        
         | cyberpunk wrote:
         | Lucky Monty, he got to sell it twice!
        
           | tpmx wrote:
           | Sun paid $1B the first time (in 2008).
        
           | slim wrote:
           | Who said opensource can't be profitable ?
        
           | fullstop wrote:
           | He did create MaxDB as part of MySQL AB, so one could say
           | that he got the Full Monty.
        
           | MangoCoffee wrote:
           | LOL. you ain't wrong
        
         | ab_testing wrote:
         | He just needs to have another kid.
        
           | c0brac0bra wrote:
           | I'm pulling for "RickyDB"
        
             | golergka wrote:
             | What's wrong with BobbyTables?
        
               | jonathankoren wrote:
               | It has poor security and storage instability. ;)
        
             | CoastalCoder wrote:
             | Sorry, I know that explaining a joke makes it less funny,
             | but would you mind? I'm really curious now.
        
               | rootlocus wrote:
               | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/Little_Bobby_T
               | abl...
        
               | zamadatix wrote:
               | Wait now I'm confused... Ricky is a diminutive form of
               | Richard and Bobby is a diminutive form of Robert - what's
               | the link?
        
               | rootlocus wrote:
               | Because I was confused and thought I was replying to
               | someone who didn't understand the "BobbyTables", sibling
               | below. My bad.
        
               | skuzye wrote:
               | It's all explained here:
               | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | tromp wrote:
         | MaxDB [1] is already a thing.
         | 
         | [1]
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Widenius#Personal_life
        
         | JJMcJ wrote:
         | Don't forget cousin Postgres.
        
           | CoastalCoder wrote:
           | Now I'm wondering where Oracle and DB2 would be in that
           | family tree.
        
             | RedShift1 wrote:
             | Abusive uncle for Oracle seems apt to me.
        
             | TremendousJudge wrote:
             | The part of the family that isn't on speaking terms anymore
        
           | diego_sandoval wrote:
           | And his son, little Bobby Tables.
        
           | schnevets wrote:
           | And that mischievous brat who lives down the street, Mongo.
        
             | stjohnswarts wrote:
             | I bet they all went to Berkley U.
        
         | stjohnswarts wrote:
         | Are there any grandkids? Surely someone is procreating to make
         | sure we won't run out of names.
        
         | Eric_WVGG wrote:
         | Wow. I've spent a lifetime vaguely hating MySQL because I'm
         | bothered by computer software that projects first-person
         | pronouns onto users (Microsoft Windows "My Computer" -- um, no,
         | Windows, you're not me, if you're addressing me, it's "Your
         | Computer").
         | 
         | I'm going to be spending a long while contemplating this. My.
         | That's so sweet.
        
           | omgmajk wrote:
           | The pronunciation of the name My, or Y in Swe/Fin is somewhat
           | different from English, it's hard to write down what it
           | sounds like but you can use google translate to get somewhat
           | the right thing.
           | 
           | Here, the word yxa (axe) comes close. https://translate.googl
           | e.com/?sl=sv&tl=en&text=yxa&op=transl...
           | 
           | Edit: Found someone saying the name My, as in Lilla My from
           | the moomins https://forvo.com/word/lilla_my/
        
           | macksd wrote:
           | You misunderstand - the computer belongs to Windows.
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | mrweasel wrote:
         | That had to be a difficult talk at the dinner table: Sorry My,
         | but you have to go live with uncle Larry now.
        
           | sroussey wrote:
           | English is not their first language.
        
           | awill wrote:
           | Ha. Actually, I sold you to uncle Larry, but don't worry,
           | I'll be spending more time with your sister.
        
           | cerved wrote:
           | I prefer the sound of SnorreDB
        
         | me_me_mu_mu wrote:
         | His final one should just be YourSQL.
         | 
         | I'm having trouble with YourSQL, but its now MySQL problem :(
        
       | IgorPartola wrote:
       | How many database companies are out there that made it big? How
       | many are based on FOSS? It seems like the lesson of "you can't
       | make money in a FOSS database (or file system)" keeps being
       | learned and relearned the hard way.
        
         | volsa_ wrote:
         | MongoDB would be one that comes to mind which is public traded
         | (https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/MDB/)
        
           | ashvardanian wrote:
           | they are doing OK, but much worse than the private Snowflake,
           | in terms of multiples and growth rate. FOSS is too easy to
           | replicate, so Mongo is most likely earning a lot less than
           | AWS and other cloud vendors from their forks of Mongo.
        
             | jerrybender wrote:
             | Snowflake is publicly traded
        
           | avrionov wrote:
           | The market will be challenging because the big cloud players
           | offer their version, but recently there were a few successful
           | database companies:
           | 
           | - MongoDB
           | 
           | - Snowflake
           | 
           | - Databricks
           | 
           | These 3 are probably the biggest, but there are few others
           | which are promising: Cockroach Labs, Materialize,
           | PlanetScale, Yugabyte.
        
       | pmarreck wrote:
       | Any comparisons to postgres?
        
       | rr808 wrote:
       | Is MariaDB code base a fork of MySQL, seems a good business to
       | sell something twice. I would have expected him to have a non-
       | compete after selling it the first time. Anyone know how he
       | pulled this off?
        
         | tomtheelder wrote:
         | MariaDB is 12 years old. Any sort of non-compete probably
         | expired.
        
           | zibzab wrote:
           | Yes, but this is Oracle we are talking about. For every
           | developer they have 4 salesmen and 5 lawyers...
        
             | [deleted]
        
         | hodgesrm wrote:
         | Assuming you have sensible legal advice, non-competes related
         | to company sale have a duration. 3 years is typical in
         | California, which was presumably governing law for the MySQL
         | purchase by Sun.
        
         | ashvardanian wrote:
         | Sadly I have to note, that almost all modern DBMS companies
         | don't bring anything new to the table. They incredibly over-
         | funded, but compete in S&M instead of R&D. A sizable chunk of
         | those are essentially Postgres over RocksDB. Don't want to name
         | anyone here, but 2 minutes of Googling with the right keywords
         | will bring up more examples
        
       | mizzao wrote:
       | Wow, this seems like a tiny public company, reminding me of 1990s
       | IPOs...which is great.
       | 
       | Much better than gargantuan privately held companies where all
       | the gains are going to a small group of capital holders.
        
         | JohnWhigham wrote:
         | What makes you think the stock market is any different? If
         | anything, a private company has greater leeway to share the
         | wealth because they don't have nagging institutional
         | shareholders. How many public companies have robust profit-
         | sharing programs? FAANG-level companies don't count because
         | they're in their own category
        
       | bpodgursky wrote:
       | I know SPACs get a lot of hate but I love seeing Wall Street
       | listing firms get cut out of the IPO, losing their enormous
       | "traditional" slice of the IPO pop.
       | 
       | Good luck to MariaDB.
        
         | NelsonMinar wrote:
         | As a class, SPACs have higher fees than IPOs and perform worse
         | as investments. https://www.economist.com/finance-and-
         | economics/2021/12/04/h...
        
         | boulos wrote:
         | You're thinking of "direct listings" (and even then, Morgan
         | Stanley has done several of them). SPACs are actually fairly
         | inefficient and usually give large windfalls to the SPAC
         | _sponsors_.
        
           | bpodgursky wrote:
           | I'm far more OK giving a windfall to the SPAC sponsor who
           | sought out and helped a promising company to merge with and
           | list, than a WS gatekeeper who is paid simply for being in-
           | between a startup and an IPO.
        
             | mikeyouse wrote:
             | Yeah, let's stick it to the Wall Street gatekeepers by
             | paying fees to this SPAC.
             | 
             | > The Angel Pond SPAC vehicle was founded by CEO and
             | Chairman Theodore Wang, the founder of Puissance Capital
             | Management and Angel Pond Capital and a former Partner at
             | Goldman Sachs, and Simon Xie, the founder and Executive
             | Director of Hangzhou Hupan Shannan Capital Management and a
             | co-founder of Alibaba Group.
             | 
             | If you want public money (via SPAC or IPO), you're paying
             | money to "Wall Street" in one form or another.
        
         | _sword wrote:
         | Ultimately Wall Street gets paid more for SPACs than IPOs. Both
         | sponsors and their advisors get more fees and upside. There's a
         | reason so many SPAC's happened during 2020 and 2021 and it
         | wasn't because companies thought SPAC's were superior to IPO's.
         | Banks made more money.
        
         | HaZeust wrote:
         | The trick to stopping Wall Street listing firms from their
         | slice is NOT SPACs, but rather the "Dutch Auction" IPO method.
         | Created by American Company WR Hambrecht - and popularized by
         | American Company Google, the Dutch Auction IPO method allows
         | online bidders to pre-emptively bid a stock's price, which lets
         | companies find an equilibrium for supply and demand that they
         | believe investors will be happy about. This, in turn, allows
         | IPOs to encounter less manipulation and allows them to dodge
         | banking "flips"; where banks set the price, buy it low, and
         | sell high in the future
        
       | capableweb wrote:
       | > MariaDB, Fast Growing, Popular Open Source Database Software
       | Company
       | 
       | No matter how I turn and adjust the parameters, MariaDB seems to
       | be the least popular of the big databases on the market today
       | (https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&q=...)
       | and looking long-term (2004-preset), it seems like it's
       | popularity is going down, not up
       | (https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=MariaDB).
       | 
       | I wonder what metrics they are looking at to figure out that it's
       | "Fast Growing", under "Viral adoption" and "A leading relational
       | database brand"? Probably they have some insight that I don't, or
       | this is just a press release filled with the usual marketing
       | lies.
        
         | pkaye wrote:
         | It's the fastest growing database named MariaDB.
        
         | The_rationalist wrote:
         | Human resources. Mariadb commit and changes activity is
         | significantly higher than postgres
        
         | ksec wrote:
         | Most are either sticking with MySQL ( which is still working
         | fine ) or moved to PostgreSQL. MariaDB is sort of in a very odd
         | position.
         | 
         | Had Oracle completely abandoned MySQL like they did with
         | Solaris it would have been an easier choice to move to Maria.
         | Instead they nurture it like they did with Java.
         | 
         | Although I am wondering if they will ever release 9.0.
        
           | holoduke wrote:
           | We are running mariadb for many years on a 50k request per
           | second app. Works pretty fine. Why should we migrate to
           | postgress? I know many mid sized projects relying on MariaDb.
           | It's a stable database proven in many different scenarios.
        
           | pjmlp wrote:
           | Solaris might not get Linux level updates, but cool stuff
           | like hardware memory tagging by default on SPARC has been
           | done during Oracle ownership.
           | 
           | Most mainstream OSes are yet to catch up to Solaris SPARC on
           | this regard.
        
         | gk1 wrote:
         | "Leading" is a meaningless marketing term you use when you
         | can't say "#1". And I say that as a marketer.
        
         | ahoka wrote:
         | I assume it's in the market where people actually pay for a
         | database and make choice of software other than "what's in
         | Debian".
        
         | renewiltord wrote:
         | Bloody hell. MySQL is the juggernaut of DBs. I guess I lived in
         | an echo chamber with my huge Postgres love.
         | 
         | But I echo the other comments in that I search for MySQL even
         | if I'm using MariaDB.
        
           | bduerst wrote:
           | MySQL is typically the "M" in LAMP stacks, which was a large
           | portion of the web 2.0 CMS takeover (long, long ago it feels
           | like).
           | 
           | I think SQLite came close to challenging it in the early
           | 2010s with it's mobile app adoption.
        
         | stjohnswarts wrote:
         | I don't know why anyone would use it outside of the need for
         | some legacy mysql stuff or something. For me it is always
         | postgresql or sqlite (I have never had to work with a nosql
         | solution) depending on the situation.
        
         | yrgulation wrote:
         | I am an almost daily user of mariadb. However, when i google
         | anything mariadb query wise i instead type mysql. As the two
         | dialects are nearly identical but there is more documentation
         | available for the mysql search keyword on google.
        
           | pradn wrote:
           | There's an interesting push-and-pull here. Keep the existing
           | dialect to make it easy to switch, or add differentiating
           | features that may introduce dialect incompatibility. An issue
           | as old as time for SQL DBs.
        
             | abirch wrote:
             | Microsoft's infamous embrace and extend strategy.
             | 
             | Word Perfect works with Word, but Word doesn't work with
             | Word Perfect.
        
               | pjmlp wrote:
               | Word Perfect doesn't have anyone to blame but themselves,
               | 
               | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8163741
        
           | tomxor wrote:
           | Same here. Only time I search for mariadb is when it's
           | mariadb specific configuration.
        
           | johncena33 wrote:
           | You should use bing or duckduckgo. I've been hearing lately
           | on HN that they are many orders better than Google.
        
             | stjohnswarts wrote:
             | Many orders? Come on. I have had better results on one or
             | the other and flip between them but not "orders of
             | magnitude" different.
        
             | contravariant wrote:
             | At searching? I can't comment on bing but duckduckgo is
             | _different_ , not necessarily better. In fact for vague
             | matches and context sensitive terms it's quite a bit worse
             | than google.
        
             | grepfru_it wrote:
             | definitely not duckduckgo. bing has been on par, with
             | technical searches but lacking otherwise
        
               | tomxor wrote:
               | Keep in mind this is changing over time. Search engines
               | do not stand still, I keep bouncing between Google and
               | DDG, the former has been steadily decreasing in quality
               | and the later increasing to the point that I now use DDG
               | first.
               | 
               | I'm not necessarily saying your opinion at this moment in
               | time will change, only that you should re-evaluate it
               | occasionally.
        
               | Tijdreiziger wrote:
               | Why not DDG? I switched from Google to DDG a few years
               | ago, and have been satisfactorily using it since.
        
               | [deleted]
        
             | bool3max wrote:
             | I have found the opposite to be the case.
        
         | ransom1538 wrote:
         | Funny. A super vocal wrong opinion dominates. Yeah, no. MariaDB
         | is everywhere, mysql is the master of all stored production
         | content, no one uses postgres, and people just query mysql not
         | MariaDB.
        
           | capableweb wrote:
           | Super vocal? Wrong? I'm not even making any claims, I'm just
           | pointing to data I have available to me, and question their
           | statements with the caveat that probably they have different
           | data available than me.
        
         | stjohnswarts wrote:
         | I don't know why anyone would use it outside the need for some
         | legacy MySQL stuff or something. For me, it is always
         | PostgreSQL or SQLite (I have never had to work with a NoSQL
         | solution) depending on the situation.
        
         | adventured wrote:
         | > Probably they have some insight that I don't, or this is just
         | a press release filled with the usual marketing lies.
         | 
         | Definitely typical marketing lies. They're IPO'ing precisely
         | because it's a very good time to get out. There's no more
         | upside left in MariaDB as a database/brand/business and the
         | stock market is still high.
        
         | pengaru wrote:
         | MariaDB the company has also made acquisitions in the space,
         | Clustrix for example.
        
         | achillean wrote:
         | It does look like it's growing but not at a crazy rate while
         | MySQL has been declining:
         | 
         | https://imgur.com/gallery/XJ3mDzz
        
           | capableweb wrote:
           | Cool! Shodan is a very useful tool, too bad it's not worth
           | paying for it for me. As someone who is not a user, would you
           | mind posting the graphs for the rest of the software I put
           | into Google Trends? The full list would be MariaDB, mysql,
           | PostgreSQL, mongodb and SQL Server
        
             | achillean wrote:
             | Sure, here you go:
             | 
             | https://imgur.com/a/iTuuc94
             | 
             | Btw Shodan Trends (https://trends.shodan.io) is available
             | to members as well. Membership costs a one-time payment of
             | $49 for a lifetime account upgrade
             | (https://account.shodan.io/billing/member). You can only do
             | 100 Trend queries per month (if it's not yet cached) but it
             | doesn't require a subscription.
        
         | eatonphil wrote:
         | It was my impression that many distros alias mariadb as mysql
         | because it's the capital-f Free version so when you install the
         | default distro mysql you are actually installing mariadb.
         | 
         | Edit: in fact I think that if you search "default" on this page
         | these are all the distros that do this.
         | https://mariadb.com/kb/en/distributions-which-include-mariad...
        
           | mdasen wrote:
           | I think this was more common years ago. MySQL and MariaDB
           | have diverged more in the years since which means that people
           | want to know which they're installing. For example, RedHat
           | Enterprise Linux used MariaDB as the default in RHEL 7, but
           | RHEL8 splits them back out.
           | 
           | https://mariadb.com/kb/en/incompatibilities-and-feature-
           | diff...
           | 
           | While they're still quite similar and many of the differences
           | might not be something that you hit, there are enough
           | differences that it should be explicit.
        
             | cptaj wrote:
             | But search queries of everyone using either DB on a day-to-
             | day, high level development basis will probably just search
             | for mysql and get better results. This is definitely what
             | drives this google trend
        
             | awill wrote:
             | This was really surprising. Back when RHEL 7 launched, it
             | really looked like MariaDB was going to take over from
             | MySQL. It doesn't look that way anymore. I suspect the
             | reason is that Maria diverged too much, and people didn't
             | want the risk of using something that they couldn't migrate
             | away from.
             | 
             | Regardless, where possible, I use non-relational. When
             | relational is required, I use Postgres.
        
               | Kinrany wrote:
               | Can you link any good arguments for defaulting to non-
               | relational?
        
               | wayoutthere wrote:
               | Simpler, more flexible data model along with speed /
               | storage efficiency (you're not updating many indexes so
               | writes are much simpler). Your transaction layer data
               | model should be as flat as possible; enrich with
               | relational data in your analytics systems and data
               | warehouses to optimize query speed.
        
               | endymi0n wrote:
               | Beware however that this flexibility and initial ease is
               | more often than not a slippery slope into chaos.
               | 
               | This article put it really well in my opionion: There are
               | no schemaless databases, just the ones with an explicit
               | schema and the ones with their schema defined in a couple
               | hundred places in code.
               | 
               | One of them is slightly easier to start out with, the
               | other to evolve, maintain and communicate (double serving
               | as self-documentation) across multiple engineers.
               | 
               | https://orangematter.solarwinds.com/2015/02/24/schemaless
               | -da...
        
               | PeterCorless wrote:
               | The Internet is usually not presented to you in real-time
               | in 3rd normalized form. There are times when you can
               | control the data sources, but many times you will be
               | presented with data in real time, and you cannot spend
               | the time to normalize everything.
               | 
               | A lot depends on the data you have, and the data you
               | anticipate. If you have well-controlled data sources,
               | sure, 3rd normalized form and tables with JOINs.
               | 
               | But sometimes you have to deal with the data you're
               | handed. Denormalized and only, at best, semi-structured.
               | Then it's time for NoSQL.
               | 
               | i.e., choose the right tool for the data you have and the
               | queries you need. Don't try to force-fit the data to a
               | tool just because you're used to it.
               | 
               | Analogy: use a hammer for a nail, and a screwdriver for
               | screws.
        
               | lowercased wrote:
               | I use the terms 'schema-on-read' vs 'schema-on-write'.
               | But that might be too techy for some folks, even if I'm
               | talking to 'database' people...?
        
               | [deleted]
        
           | cblconfederate wrote:
           | mysql is also trending down
        
             | datavirtue wrote:
             | Don't understand why it's taking this long since we have
             | had a far superior free software alternative for many many
             | years now...postgres
        
               | TylerE wrote:
               | MySQL was popualar for the same reason PHP4/5 was
               | popular.
               | 
               | It let lazy "coders" churn out simple brochure sites
               | without having to think.
        
               | cblconfederate wrote:
               | One needs good enough, not superior
        
           | ComputerGuru wrote:
           | FreeBSD is odd: you install it with `pkg install
           | mariadb-{server,client}` but you start it with `service
           | MySQL-server start`.
           | 
           | (The package name is moderated by the FreeBSD ports team, but
           | the port (MariaDB) installs its service and gives itself
           | whatever service name it desires.)
        
         | lbhdc wrote:
         | I am surprised how low postgres ranks in those trends. I guess
         | I have been in an echo chamber for too long, because my
         | perception was that it was much more pervasive.
        
           | cyberpunk wrote:
           | I've not seen any company which using a RDBMS, that isn't on
           | PG for the last 5 years, and I'm freelance and bounce around
           | a lot..
           | 
           | Other kinds of DBs it's all over the shop, but yeah, PG seems
           | very dominant here...
        
             | mtberatwork wrote:
             | > I've not seen any company which using a RDBMS, that isn't
             | on PG for the last 5 years
             | 
             | Facebook: https://engineering.fb.com/2021/07/22/data-
             | infrastructure/my...
        
               | williamdclt wrote:
               | I don't think Facebook is hiring a lot of freelance, it's
               | probably not the sort of company the person you're
               | answering to is talking about when they say "here".
        
             | pjmlp wrote:
             | I have seen Postgres between 2014 and 2018 at one specific
             | customer, everyone else to where I go it is either Oracle
             | or SQL Server.
             | 
             | It depends pretty much where one bounces around.
        
           | vidar wrote:
           | Wordpress and PHP in general are very MySQL heavy I think.
           | That is a lot of volume.
        
             | bbarnett wrote:
             | Yet mariadb is what is installed most often for mysql usage
             | requirements.
        
               | evanelias wrote:
               | These days, most smaller users go with a managed DBaaS
               | such as AWS RDS, and on RDS MySQL gets _massively_ more
               | usage than MariaDB.
               | 
               | I build schema management software for MySQL and MariaDB,
               | https://www.skeema.io, used by several hundred companies.
               | Among my userbase, MariaDB is a tiny minority, to such an
               | extent that I wonder if it's worthwhile to continue
               | keeping up with their new quarterly release schedule.
        
               | oblio wrote:
               | > These days, most smaller users go with a managed DBaaS
               | such as AWS RDS, and on RDS MySQL gets massively more
               | usage than MariaDB.
               | 
               | Do they, do? I expect all small stuff to be on old school
               | VPSes with included managed DBs.
               | 
               | Has the world of cheap PHP hosting finally moved on? I'd
               | be super surprised.
        
               | ransom1538 wrote:
               | "Has the world of cheap PHP hosting finally moved on? I'd
               | be super surprised. "
               | 
               | No 90% of wordpress which is 60% of the internet use
               | small local hosted mysql instances. No they don't setup a
               | vm on aws.
        
               | evanelias wrote:
               | WordPress is very widely used, but it is not "60% of the
               | internet" (or even 60% of the web) based on any
               | statistics I see anywhere. Some sites say it's 60% of all
               | CMS's; perhaps you may be transposing these stats?
               | 
               | Anyway, among WP usage, I would confidently wager that
               | the percentage running in "cheap VPS" setups is declining
               | fast each year. Many different reasons for this. The
               | heyday of smalltime independent bloggers (on WP or
               | otherwise) was a decade ago. Large SaaS hosts (including
               | the official wordpress.com) make up a big chunk of WP
               | hosting. Security is a huge issue with self-hosted WP.
               | Companies using WP as a CMS aren't going to use a tiny
               | VPS.
               | 
               | There are still a _lot_ of WordPress instances on cheap
               | VPS setups, don 't get me wrong. I just don't believe
               | it's still such a major force where it would make up a
               | majority of _new_ mysql /mariadb installations anymore.
        
               | lioeters wrote:
               | They're probably thinking of stats published by W3Techs.
               | 
               | > WordPress is used by 65.3% of all the websites whose
               | content management system we know. This is 43.3% of all
               | websites.
               | 
               | https://w3techs.com/technologies/details/cm-wordpress
        
               | lewantmontreal wrote:
               | > Simply track your desired schema state in a repo of
               | CREATE statements, and the tool figures out how to apply
               | any changes to your tables and routines.
               | 
               | Wow, this sounds extremely useful, great job! Does anyone
               | know anything like this for Postgres?
        
               | evanelias wrote:
               | Thanks! I know of a couple Postgres tools that work in a
               | declarative fashion: migra [1] and sqldef [2].
               | 
               | Migra is Postgres-specific. Its model is similar to
               | Skeema's, in that the desired-state CREATEs are run in a
               | temporary location and then introspected, to build an in-
               | memory understanding of the desired state which can be
               | diff'ed against the current actual state. (This approach
               | has also been borrowed by other recent tools, including
               | Prisma Migrate [3]). In this manner, the tool doesn't
               | need a SQL parser, instead relying on the real DBMS to
               | guarantee the CREATE is interpreted correctly with your
               | exact DBMS version/flavor/settings.
               | 
               | In contrast, sqldef supports multiple databases,
               | including Postgres and MySQL (among others). Unlike other
               | tools, it uses a SQL parser-based approach to build its
               | in-memory understanding of the desired state. As a DB
               | professional, personally this approach scares me a bit,
               | given the amount of nonstandard stuff in each DBMS's SQL
               | dialect. But I'm inherently biased on this topic. And I
               | will note sqldef's author is a core Ruby committer and
               | JIT author, and is extremely skilled at parsers.
               | 
               | [1] https://databaseci.com/docs/migra
               | 
               | [2] https://github.com/k0kubun/sqldef
               | 
               | [3] https://github.com/prisma/prisma-
               | engines/blob/main/migration...
        
               | eatonphil wrote:
               | Is it possible MariaDB registers itself as MySQL? No clue
               | how your system works or how you figure out which DB it
               | is.
        
               | evanelias wrote:
               | To clarify, my comment was based on anecdotal discussions
               | and interactions with users, issue reports, feature
               | requests, user enthusiasm for new MySQL
               | support/functionality vs relative lack of enthusiasm for
               | new MariaDB support/functionality, etc.
               | 
               | The Skeema CLI is able to accurately identify your
               | database version and flavor (which is necessary for its
               | functionality), there is no notion of MariaDB registering
               | itself as MySQL. But the CLI does not contain telemetry,
               | so I don't have hard stats on MySQL vs MariaDB usage.
        
               | Tijdreiziger wrote:
               | Nice tool, hadn't heard of it before.
               | 
               | > These days, most smaller users go with a managed DBaaS
               | such as AWS RDS
               | 
               | I think there's likely a long tail of small (non-tech)
               | businesses that run WordPress (or Drupal/Joomla) on a
               | traditional shared web host (the kind that only offers
               | PHP and MySQL/MariaDB).
        
               | robjan wrote:
               | I'd say that ignoring the whales, PHP and MySQL
               | (especially WordPress) are the opposite of the long tail.
        
               | jjeaff wrote:
               | I agree, and even some of the whales are using php/MySQL
               | albeit in some cases, highly modified versions of php.
        
             | trey-jones wrote:
             | MariaDB is more closely aligned with Wordpress and PHP in
             | terms of licensing. I sort of assumed that most users of
             | (FL)OSS who had previously used MySQL would be using
             | MariaDB by now, but based on comments in this topic I must
             | be wrong.
        
           | abirch wrote:
           | Netezza, Greenplum, Red Shift and CoachroachDB are all
           | Postgres forks. Postgre is pretty popular as well, at least
           | for the recruiters who spam me.
        
             | acatton wrote:
             | CockroachDB is not a fork of Postgres, it's a NewSQL
             | database written from scratch, compatible with the
             | PostgreSQL protocol, and aiming at being SQL compatible
             | with Postgres.
             | 
             | I think you were thinking about YugabyteDB which is a
             | wrapper/fork around Postgres.
        
               | abirch wrote:
               | No, I was flat out wrong about CockroachDB. Thanks for
               | correcting me.
        
         | PeterCorless wrote:
         | A more accurate chart may be at DB-engines.com:
         | 
         | https://db-engines.com/en/ranking_trend/relational+dbms
         | 
         | MariaDB is the 8th most popular SQL RDBMS.
         | 
         | MySQL is definitely far more popular, as is PostgreSQL, but
         | MariaDB still continues to rise in popularity (107.11 now, up
         | +13.22 in the past year), though its relative ranking remains
         | at #12 on the overall list:
         | 
         | https://db-engines.com/en/ranking
         | 
         | [EDIT: MySQL fell -28.69 to 1214.68 in the past year.
         | PostgreSQL rose +58.42 to 609.38 in the past year.]
        
           | PeterCorless wrote:
           | Also, in case anyone was interested, on DB-engines.com, the
           | real ground giving way is for Microsoft SQL Server. While it
           | is still at the #3 spot on the list, its absolute score
           | dropped -73.88 to 949.05 -- a year-over-year drop of -7.2% of
           | total.
           | 
           | * MySQL's drop in the index was only 4.5%
           | 
           | * PostgreSQL's rise was 9.5%
           | 
           | * MariaDB's rise was 12.3%
        
         | denton-scratch wrote:
         | > MariaDB seems to be the least popular of the big databases
         | 
         | You linked to a page that charts the relative prevalence of
         | product-names in Google searches.
         | 
         | That's not popularity; that's just googlers choosing the search
         | term they think is most likely to find them the result they
         | want.
        
         | jakear wrote:
         | HN-specific Trends of DB comments and stories echo your view
         | (in a chamber-like fashion...): MySql popular since early days,
         | Postgres recently growing to overcome it, Maria nowhere to be
         | seen
         | 
         | https://jacksonkearl.github.io/HackerTrends/?query=%22mariad...
        
         | bbarnett wrote:
         | mariadb is the default on every Linux distro, except for
         | Oracle's clone of redhat.
         | 
         | MySQL, for example, isn't in debian any more. And hasn't been
         | for years.
         | 
         | All thanks to oracle, of course.
         | 
         | As well, most people search for mysql, when looking for mariadb
         | issues.
         | 
         | Mariadb is far, far more popular than mysql these days.
        
           | rlpb wrote:
           | In Ubuntu, both MySQL and MariaDB are available. MySQL is in
           | the main component, unlike MariaDB which is in universe.
           | Reverse dependencies in the Ubuntu archive are built against
           | MySQL, not MariaDB.
        
           | evanelias wrote:
           | > Mariadb is far, far more popular than mysql these days.
           | 
           | It depends greatly on what metric you're using. If you look
           | at the huge list of large, well-known tech companies using
           | MySQL, nearly all of them are literally using MySQL (or a
           | derivative like Percona Server), not MariaDB.
           | 
           | In combination these companies employ several hundred
           | thousand engineers, building products on top of MySQL, not
           | MariaDB.
        
       | scandox wrote:
       | It might just be me but recently I have found myself a bit
       | uncertain or nervous about the true compatibility of MySQL and
       | MariaDB. I also find I sometimes don't know which I'm connecting
       | to between all the different systems I'm running...which I used
       | to be quite relaxed about, but now makes me a tad jittery.
        
         | evanelias wrote:
         | They're not drop-in replacements for each other, haven't been
         | for years. Each has some unique features that the other lacks.
        
           | eatonphil wrote:
           | The Alpine Wiki has an informal blurb about it. The wiki
           | doesn't seem to think there's a huge difference.
           | 
           | https://wiki.alpinelinux.org/wiki/Mysql#MariaDB_vs_MySQL
        
             | evanelias wrote:
             | The Alpine Wiki isn't written by MySQL/MariaDB experts, and
             | is focused on an installation / very basic administrative
             | perspective; from that angle they're not too different. But
             | they've substantially diverged in terms of internals,
             | advanced administrative functionality, and overall focus.
             | 
             | source: I've been working in this space for 19 years, at
             | scales ranging from tiny startups, to largest known mysql
             | installation in the world.
        
               | eatonphil wrote:
               | Yeah true. Any good comparisons you can point us at?
        
               | evanelias wrote:
               | This is from a very reliable source but is 4 years old
               | (pre-MySQL 8):
               | https://www.percona.com/blog/2017/11/02/mysql-vs-mariadb-
               | rea...
               | 
               | Separately you can search for "What's new in MySQL 8"
               | type posts, nearly everything there is unique to MySQL.
               | Some of the 5.7 stuff too, like native json column type.
               | 
               | Ditto for recent MariaDB releases, btw! To be fair they
               | have some cool stuff that MySQL lacks, such as system
               | versioned tables, Oracle DB compatibility layer, native
               | column types for uuid and inet6 (IPv6 addresses), etc.
        
               | eatonphil wrote:
               | Mariadb has an oracle compatibility layer??? Ah but it's
               | at the query layer not the wire protocol. Still very
               | cool.
        
               | pizza234 wrote:
               | The amount of informations around is surprisingly poor;
               | it's hard to find technical information.
               | 
               | At least a significant difference is MariadDB's addition
               | of several specialized engines - see
               | https://mariadb.com/kb/en/storage-engines:
               | 
               | - MariaDB ColumnStore: Column-based
               | 
               | - Mroonga: Full text search
               | 
               | - OQGRAPH: Graph storage
               | 
               | - SphinxSE: Full text search
               | 
               | Where the above use cases are required, it's actually a
               | big deal. A common use case may be FT searches - MySQL's
               | support is a trainwreck, and I have the suspicion that
               | Oracle has little to no interest in it.
        
               | tehbeard wrote:
               | Curious to learn more about Mroonga. FT has been a
               | sticking point for several sites we've built, and the
               | search daemons (typesense, meilisearch) tend to not as
               | accurate as we'd like.
        
               | sroussey wrote:
               | Same. I'll have to take a look as well. The built-in FT
               | going back to MyISAM and later was ok for small things,
               | but needed to remain in memory wand dint handle lots of
               | updates well. At one point we split a table into shards
               | on the same database to ease locking issues.
               | 
               | One thing I wish were available was a hybrid btree and
               | inverted index. If you are multi tenant then you want
               | your search to only happen within the one user's data --
               | not across all accounts and then filter for the one user.
        
           | [deleted]
        
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