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MariaDB vs. MySQL: A Performance Comparison
Nerval's Lobster writes "MariaDB is a fork of the MySQL source code, split off in the wake of concerns over what Oracle would do with MySQL licensing. In addition to its role as a 'drop-in replacement' for MySQL, MariaDB also includes some new features that (some claim) make it better than MySQL. Jeff Cogswell compares MySQL and MariaDB and suggests (in his opinion) that there's 'more than enough reason to ditch MySQL and switch over to MariaDB and stay there.' Why? While he breaks down MariaDB's new features and thinks many of them aren't that fantastic, and while MariaDB's performance isn't that much better than that of MySQL ('MariaDB's performance appears a bit better on multi-core machines, but I strongly suspect that one could tweak MySQL to match'), the questions over Oracle and MySQL licensing give him pause. 'MariaDB shows every indication that it will be around for quite awhile, while you can't really say the same of Oracle's MySQL,' he writes. 'Free-and-open MySQL competes with Oracle's proprietary and extremely competitive tools. That alone is grounds for concern — will Oracle do something to impede MySQL's development?'"
They did. In short they stopped providing test cases for new features. Do not use MySQL. Period. Read more about in here.
My favorite part is that the article is titled "MariaDB vs. MySQL: A Performance Comparison", but since the performance is almost identical they spend most of the summary talking about ideological differences. I guess "MariaDB vs. MySQL: An Ideological Comparison" didn't have the same ring to it.
E pluribus unum
MariaDB is taking the MySQL code via the GPL and then building on top of it with new code. Those changes are all having their copyright assigned to MariaDB, and in some cases the GPL will also require a public release. Eventually MariaDB is expected to have a non-trivial set of improvements, and the copyright ownership of all the new code will be to MariaDB. That allows selling the combination of GPL core plus some explicitly owned private code, the exact same way MySQL was sold to Sun.
This is the same scam that let Monty cash out once already, using the work of open source contributors who assigned their copyright to his original company. No reason he can't do it again, if people are gullible enough to fall for it twice.
I have done some tests some months ago, and I checked that MariaDB solves some problems that MySQL has. The performance is similar using simple queries, but when you write complex queries with subqueries, lots of joins and more, then MariaDB demonstrates the power of their code. I posted an entry in my wiki of the SaltOS project explaining how MariaDB helped to my project:
- http://www.saltos.net/portal/en/wiki/75/why-use-mariadb-instead-of-mysql.htm
Josep Sanz.
The SaltOS project.
Not to mention the whole thing ignores the elephant rotting in the corner, that old Monty makes anybody working on MariaDB sign over their code so he could pull the same trick twice and sell it out from under them just as he sold MySQL.
Now don't get me wrong, I think Monty has big brass balls to be able to pull what he did last time and get away with it, he made them think they were actually buying a product in MySQL and in reality all they got was the name and the website, he ended up walking away with the code AND the customers, how he got them to buy without a do not compete I don't know but it took some big brass ones to pull it off.
But like the old saying goes "fool me once.." what is to stop Monty from pulling the same game with MariaDB? Nothing that I can see, he still has it set up so no matter who works on it HE owns the code, which means he can do whatever he wants with it. Now maybe he scammed enough off the last sale that this won't be appealing, maybe not, would you really want to take that chance?
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.