Is the future of MySQL PostgreSQL (Or MariaDB, or TiDB, or ...)?
I am not intentionally trying to upset anyone with this blog post or minimize the efforts of many brilliant people whom I admire. However, I connected with several people over the 2025 holidays who all had the same question: What is the future of MySQL? At the upcoming FOSDEM conference, several events will discuss this subject and push a particular solution. And in several ways, they are all wrong. Oracle has not been improving the community edition for a long time now. They have laid off many of their top performers in the MySQL group. We got almost a good decade and a half out of Oracle's stewardship of the "world's most popular database", and we should be thankful for that. However, now that time is over, it is time to consider future options that will involve no updates, CVEs, or innovation for what is the MySQL Community Edition. There are several choices available. Nothing! The first choice is nothing. Many folks run old, end-of-life versions of MySQL. There ...