For some reason most messages on this list get blocked by spam filters
so replying based on what I read at
https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel/2024-October/043165.html
from Mohamed:
> Hello all,
>
> I am the product manager of relational databases at Canonical.
> I want to highlight that our aim is to continue supporting whatever
> databases our Ubuntu users are using.
> According to various surveys and popularity indexes, both MySQL and
> MariaDB continue to be very popular among IT professionals:
> [1]
> https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2024/technology#most-popular-technologies-database
> [2] https://db-engines.com/en/ranking
>
> As far as the above is true and that no change is made to prevent us -
> Canonical - from shipping those packages in Ubuntu, we will continue to
> do so.
This is a sensible approach in general, but in this case I wonder how
many users are choosing MySQL on their own, and how many end up using
MySQL because Ubuntu defaults to it instead of MariaDB?
Also note that I am not suggesting to stop shipping MySQL as your
reply implies. My suggestion is to not have MySQL as the default in
future Ubuntu releases and instead align with Debian (and Fedora, and
SuSE and basically all other popular distros) in that regard. To be
exact, I wrote "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."
Related, quoting another section from my original email:
> 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.
Did you have any discussions about the Charms? They currently mention
and promote MySQL exclusively.
Where is the source code of these Charms maintained? Can an Ubuntu
community member submit improvements for better MariaDB compatibility
(or at least mentions of MariaDB)?
I can find these old ones for MariaDB but no MySQL equivalents:
* https://launchpad.net/charm-mariadb vs https://launchpad.net/charm-mysql
* https://launchpad.net/charm-k8s-mariadb vs
https://launchpad.net/charm-k8s-mysql
I have no personal experience with either using or developing Charms,
but I could speculate that since the Canonical server team exclusively
works on MySQL maintenance in Ubuntu, the community efforts about
MariaDB Charms died out due to lack of support? Any plans for the
server team to start investing at least a little bit in MariaDB
maintenance?
In the https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2024/technology#most-popular-technologies-database
survey, 40% say they use MySQL and 17% say MariaDB. Given this 2:1
ratio, should the server team spend one third of its MySQL time on
MariaDB to match that metric of usage?
I realize that you might not want to discuss too much product plans on
a public mailing list. I appreciate you sharing whatever you feel
comfortable to share about future plans. Thanks!
- Otto
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