Should I maybe re-post this on some other mailing list or on
https://discourse.ubuntu.com/?
I did notice there was some people commenting the topic in the news
article https://www.phoronix.com/news/Ubuntu-25.04-Maybe-MariaDB,
which in turn was mentioned in
https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/ubuntu-weekly-newsletter-issue-858/48085).
I was hoping some Ubuntu community members (in particular those who
are not Canonical staff) would share some views here so we could see
what is the general sentiment. Or has everyone but WordPress users
fully migrated to PostgreSQL so that the topic of MySQL vs MariaDB is
no longer of broad interest? ;-)
On Thu, 19 Sept 2024 at 16:34, Otto Kekäläinen <otto@ubuntu.com> wrote:
>
> Hi Ubuntu devs,
>
> The MariaDB Server, a fork of MySQL created in response to it being
> acquired by Oracle, has been the default MySQL variant in Debian since
> 2016. Starting from Debian 9 "Stretch" in 2017, MariaDB has been the
> only MySQL variant in stable Debian releases. The situation has been
> similar in the Fedora and SuSE ecosystems — currently Ubuntu is the
> only major Linux distribution that ships Oracle MySQL at all.
>
> I think it is now time for Ubuntu to follow suit and at least make
> MariaDB the default in the Ubuntu 25.10 cycle, and potentially remove
> MySQL in some later release.
>
> The 25.04 development cycle is not yet open, but I am submitting this
> proposal now, as it would be an ideal time to plan and decide ahead,
> and execute immediately at the start of the 25.04 dev cycle in early
> November.
>
>
> Benefits
> =======
>
> The main benefits listed in order of importance:
>
> The MariaDB Server is more Ubuntu
> ------------------------------------------------
>
> MariaDB is more compatible with the Ubuntu community values and closer
> to the Ubuntu meaning "humanity to others" than Oracle MySQL. All Free
> and Open Source Software proponents view MariaDB as a far better
> option than Oracle MySQL, which only does code dumps at release to
> stay GPL-compliant and has no openness beyond that. MySQL does accept
> contributions, but under very strict contributor license terms and
> without transparency on what happens with the submission, and their
> contributor numbers are very low.
>
> While MariaDB isn't perfect, it does function far better in spirit
> than Oracle, thanks to all MariaDB development happening in the open.
> This means that anybody can see git commits in real-time, and
> participate in all bug tracker, mailing list and chat discussions. To
> mention some weaknesses, the reviews often take a long time and the CI
> is not consistently green, but at least there are public code reviews
> happening and all CI runs are public. This is in sharp contrast to how
> Oracle runs MySQL development. Additionally, the MariaDB Server
> development is stewarded by the non-profit MariaDB Foundation, with
> two dozen sponsors to help guarantee continuity and openness [1].
>
>
> The MariaDB Server is likely to outlive MySQL
> -------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Oracle acquired Sun Microsystems in 2008, and MySQL with it. To avoid
> antitrust lawsuits in the EU, Oracle made public commitments to not
> kill MySQL, which at the time was considered a competitor to Oracle's
> own database. While Oracle did sunset many other projects and thus
> made room for a truly open version to live on (e.g. OpenOffice ⇾
> LibreOffice, Hudson ⇾ Jenkins), in the case of MySQL, it has kept the
> lights on for now. Some argue[2] however that Oracle has been slowly
> killing MySQL in the past years by not adding relevant features to its
> core GPLv2 edition, but instead putting all new cool things in
> Heatwave, their closed source cloud-only offering.
>
> The MariaDB Server, on the other hand, has been steadily adding major
> features. MariaDB offers for example the SQL_MODE=oracle mode to ease
> migrations away from the Oracle database, something Oracle would never
> do in MySQL as it would cannibalize their own main product. Supporting
> users to migrate away from Oracle databases is important to advancing
> open source adoption in general, and good for all current and future
> Ubuntu users.
>
>
> MariaDB is growing faster than MySQL
> ----------------------------------------------------
>
> MySQL became the most popular open source database in the advent of
> web applications in the late 1990s and in particular as part of the
> LAMP stack. For example WordPress, Wikipedia and Facebook were
> originally built on MySQL. However, in the past decade MySQL has been
> in steady decline based on various data sources such as Google Trends,
> Shodan Trends and DB-Engines. These data sources however show that
> MariaDB has been steadily growing. The growth of MariaDB is far behind
> the growth of PostgreSQL, but nevertheless MariaDB is growing faster
> than MySQL.
>
> For several years already, the company behind WordPress, Automattic,
> and the Wikimedia Foundation have been using MariaDB extensively and
> have also been MariaDB Foundation sponsors. Most Linux distributions
> have been shipping only MariaDB for nearly a decade. Ubuntu is one of
> the few that has been resisting this trend, and I suggest it to be
> changed now.
>
>
> MariaDB is more stable
> -------------------------------
>
> Both MySQL and MariaDB have bugs, and some (albeit a declining number)
> of the bugs are identical, as they stem from the old code base that is
> still the same for MySQL and MariaDB. However many users have noticed
> that MySQL has in recent years had many severe bugs and the quality of
> MySQL releases seems to have declined, in particular since MySQL
> 8.0.29 [3]. The latest MySQL 8.0.38 has such a severe bug that Percona
> publicly warns about upgrading to it [4].
>
> The stability of MariaDB is also directly visible in the Debian and
> Ubuntu (Launchpad) bug trackers, where MariaDB has 55 and 2 bugs
> compared to MySQL (8.0) with 150 and 38 bugs. Both variants are in
> wide use and have had roughly the same number of releases, so the
> numbers are mostly comparable. MariaDB has been getting stable
> security updates on steady cadence since Ubuntu 14.04 in all LTS and
> non-LTS versions and, to my recollection, with zero regressions.
>
>
> MariaDB has more features
> ------------------------------------
>
> MariaDB 11.7, scheduled to be announced for general availability in
> February 2025, will have several features MySQL lacks. Notable
> examples are full vector storage and search functionality for
> retrieval augmented AI applications, complete year 2038 support,
> online schema changes (ALTER TABLE without locking the entire table),
> TLS enabled by default with zero-configuration certificate management,
> new PARSEC authentication method for improved security and much more.
> MySQL seems to be adding most new features to their non-open version,
> while the open source version that Ubuntu uses hasn't seen that many
> new significant features despite having a more frequent release
> cadence now.
>
>
> MariaDB is faster
> -----------------------
>
> Speed has always been a selling point for MySQL/MariaDB compared to
> other databases. For every new release of both MySQL and MariaDB, new
> features are introduced, and they increase the overhead a bit.
> However, MariaDB has a much better ratio of new features vs.
> performance penalty, and MySQL has both fewer features and more
> performance regressions [5]. Thus, users already on MySQL/MariaDB are
> likely to value performance and likely would benefit from the 5-30%
> performance improvement if switching to MariaDB (depends on workload).
>
>
> Switching to MariaDB right now would be the optimal timing
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Ubuntu 24.10 repositories currently contain MySQL 8.0, which will be
> end-of-life in April 2026. Users will be faced with a decision to do
> migration work from MySQL 8.0 to either a new major MySQL version or
> to MariaDB. Due to MySQL aggressively deprecating features/SQL syntax,
> upgrading to a new future MySQL version is likely going to require
> extra work. Assuming MariaDB maintains its excellent backwards
> compatibility track-record, upgrades to MariaDB from MySQL do not
> require much application changes and is likely less disruptive to the
> majority of users.
>
> Introducing MariaDB as the new default in Ubuntu 25.04 would ensure
> that when Ubuntu 26.04 comes out, the migration path from MySQL 8.0 to
> a future MariaDB version is as smooth as possible. This would also
> help minimize the number of users who would run into issues upgrading
> to MySQL 8.4 or 9.0 meanwhile.
>
>
> Potential downsides and risks
> =======================
>
> As stated above, MariaDB has been the default and only MySQL variant
> in Debian for many years. All packages in Debian have thus been proven
> to be fully MariaDB compatible for all practical purposes. No major
> downside is to be expected, but any change has the potential to cause
> disruptions and should be planned well ahead.
>
>
> Unexpected Ubuntu-only MySQL dependencies
> ---------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Changing the default MySQL variant from Oracle MySQL to MariaDB in
> Ubuntu might lead to some unexpected breakage if Ubuntu has some
> customizations regarding MySQL that are not present in Debian.
>
> To my knowledge there aren't any. Running `apt rdepends mysql*` on an
> Ubuntu 24.10 host shows that the only packages that depend on
> "mysql-server" specifically are "lyricue", which does not exist in
> Debian at all, and "mylvmbackup", which hasn't had any new upstream
> releases in a decade. All other hundreds of applications that depend
> on MySQL depend on one of the `default-mysql-*` metapackages.
>
> Currently in Ubuntu, these `default-mysql-*` metapackages depend on
> the actual MySQL packages. In Debian all the `default-mysql-*`
> packages depend on equivalent MariaDB packages. Aligning Ubuntu with
> Debian in this regard should go smoothly. All new installations would
> start using MariaDB automatically, unless users specifically opt to
> use MySQL.
>
>
> Upgrade issues
> ---------------------
>
> Changing the default MySQL variant by making the `default-mysql-*`
> packages depend on equivalent MariaDB packages will not affect
> existing systems and they will continue to run the current MySQL
> server they already have.
>
> If a host is running Ubuntu 16.04 or 18.04 with MySQL 5.7 a user could
> choose to upgrade directly to MariaDB by simply issuing `apt install
> mariadb-server`.
>
> If a host is running Ubuntu 20.04 or newer and has MySQL 8.0, the
> in-place upgrade to MariaDB is not possible with a single apt command.
> Those users could however be instructed to do a logical dump as a SQL
> file with the mysqldump tool, and uninstall MySQL 8.0, install the
> latest MariaDB and import the SQL file.
>
> If users do nothing, they would stay on MySQL 8.0 and not have to
> consider anything until MySQL 8.0 is end-of-life in April 2026. At
> that point users could do the manual upgrade via dump-and-restore to
> MariaDB.
>
> Note that while MySQL to MySQL upgrades seem smaller in name than
> MySQL to MariaDB upgrades, newer MySQL versions have deprecated a
> bunch of features and SQL syntax. Thus, upgrades to new MySQL versions
> may require more application changes to be done than simply upgrading
> to MariaDB, which so far has an excellent track-record of backwards
> compatibility.
>
> There are configuration options that are incompatible between MySQL
> and MariaDB. There are ongoing efforts to provide a migration tool
> [6]. With more user feedback, this process can be better polished for
> Ubuntu 26.04 LTS.
>
>
> Cross-host compatibility
> -------------------------------
>
> Users who have multiple Ubuntu hosts running MySQL servers and
> applications using them could in theory face some issues. For example,
> when an application server is upgraded to use the MariaDB client while
> the database server continues to run a MySQL server. However, the
> MySQL wire protocol has not had any changes in decades and thus the
> MySQL and MariaDB client libraries and client binaries are fully
> interoperable: one can use a MariaDB client to connect to a MySQL
> database and vice versa.
>
> The exception to this is any client using the MySQL X protocol. That
> is not supported in MariaDB. Those users can however choose to
> continue using MySQL. This proposal is not suggesting removing MySQL
> from Ubuntu, but simply to make MariaDB the default for a better
> future path.
>
> Another consideration is connector libraries, for example for Python
> or Java. Due to the protocol compatibility and shared background, most
> MySQL connectors are compatible with MariaDB. There are some
> incompatibilities in package names in the MariaDB Python connector,
> but these can be worked around. Thanks to having had MariaDB as
> default in Debian for several years, the remaining issues are
> marginal, but not zero.
>
> A third consideration is replication setups. Ubuntu does not include
> any replication automation, so all replication setups are managed
> manually or by 3rd party automation software. Users would need to be
> instructed to upgrade all replicas first, as MySQL and MariaDB in
> general are designed to allow replicas to connect to old sources.
> After upgrading the replica, users could then promote it to be the
> primary source instance, and shut down the old primary to complete the
> upgrade process.
>
> While there are some known edge cases when upgrades from MySQL to
> MariaDB do not fully work, they are in practice rare. Considering that
> all of Debian upgraded smoothly to MariaDB, and that ever since
> MariaDB has been steadily adding features that smoothen the migration
> path, the upgrade from MySQL to MariaDB should for most users work
> flawlessly.
>
>
> Canonical product impact
> ----------------------------------
>
> As Canonical is the main sponsor of Ubuntu, the change needs to also
> have some consideration for Canonical's business needs. Currently
> Canonical advertises MySQL at https://canonical.com/data/mysql but
> there is no https://canonical.com/data/mariadb, and Canonical's
> automation offering https://charmhub.io/mysql seems to be focused on
> MySQL. Kubernetes operators, OpenStack modules and alike exist for
> MariaDB, so it is not a technical limitation, but some effort would be
> needed to productize MariaDB automation.
>
>
> Users may need education about the change
> -----------------------------------------------------------
>
> There might still be many users who have not heard about MariaDB and
> do not know that their current app using MySQL as the backend can
> actually run equally well (and in some cases better and faster) on
> MariaDB. This can however be mitigated by explaining this in release
> notes and in documentation, like has been done in other migrations
> (e.g. OpenOffice to LibreOffice, or Oracle Java to OpenJDK).
>
> Small pun: The fact that Ubuntu 24.10 is code name "Oracular" will
> make it easier for users to remember it was the last Ubuntu version
> that defaulted to Oracle MySQL.
>
>
> Alternative considerations
> ====================
>
> While I propose MariaDB Server as the best option, for a holistic
> assessment readers should also consider alternative solutions or
> mitigations to the problems faced by Oracle MySQL.
>
>
> Keep MySQL, but demand more openness
> ---------------------------------------------------------
>
> If the Ubuntu community wants to stick to MySQL, but make it less
> risky, Ubuntu should seek ways to promote or protect the openness of
> MySQL which is currently nearly non-existent. Ubuntu could perhaps use
> its large community to persuade MySQL to publish git commits in
> real-time and allow participation in the MySQL development, and the
> Ubuntu community could promote every last bit of independent MySQL
> community activity that still exists (e.g. promote
> https://planet.oursqlcommunity.org/).
>
>
> Percona Server
> ---------------------------------------------------------
>
> If the Ubuntu community wakes up to the situation with Oracle MySQL,
> but does for some reason not want to switch to MariaDB, another
> alternative would be to collaborate with Percona. Ubuntu could
> consider offering the Percona Server, which is a fork of MySQL that
> follows Oracle more closely, but with added stability and more
> features. To illustrate the situation with one example, the audit
> plugin that Oracle MySQL only offers in their closed-source edition is
> available as open source both in the MariaDB Server and Percona
> Server. There is however added risk about the unknown capability of
> Percona Server truly maintaining a proper fork, given the age,
> complexity, depth and breadth of MySQL as a project.
>
>
> References
> =========
>
> [1] https://mariadb.org/
> [2] https://www.percona.com/blog/is-oracle-finally-killing-mysql/
> [3] https://jfg-mysql.blogspot.com/2023/11/thoughts-on-october-2023-mysql-releases.html
> [4] https://www.percona.com/blog/do-not-upgrade-to-any-version-of-mysql-after-8-0-37/,
> https://www.percona.com/blog/mysql-8-0-vs-5-7-are-the-newer-versions-more-problematic/
> [5] https://smalldatum.blogspot.com/2024/04/sysbench-on-less-small-server-mariadb.html
> [6] https://github.com/MariaDB/server/pull/2976
>
>
> Package trackers
> =============
> https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/mariadb
> https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/mariadb
>
> https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/mysql-8.0
> https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/mysql-8.0
>
> https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/mysql-defaults
> https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/mysql-defaults
>
>
> Technical details about MariaDB release policies and testing
> =============================================
>
> The MariaDB yearly LTS model in February provides the opportunity for
> a MariaDB LTS release to correspond to the LTS cycle of Ubuntu. The
> to-be-LTS version should be available as a release candidate in
> November 2025 at the start of the Ubuntu 26.04 LTS dev cycle:
> https://mariadb.com/kb/en/mariadb-release-model/
>
> The upstream MariaDB developers test against the architectures of
> amd64, arm64, s390x and ppc64le against real hardware of Ubuntu LTS
> releases well in advance to their release:
> https://buildbot.mariadb.org/#/grid?branch=11.4
>
> MariaDB is well tested on Ubuntu already, thanks to the official
> Docker container images being built on the latest Ubuntu LTS tag,
> which has well over a billion total image pulls:
> https://hub.docker.com/_/mariadb
>
>
>
> Disclaimer
> ========
> I am the maintainer for MariaDB in both Debian and Ubuntu, and
> distrust and detest Oracle as a company, so I am naturally biased
> towards MariaDB. I am however striving to represent both balanced pros
> and cons in this proposal and including references.
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