Would love to dump MySQL and start using Drizzle.

Similarly, Ubuntu is not a fundamental revision to Debian’s community. It, like Drizzle, just moved the goalposts.

But to then discuss how the community works (or does not) without first-hand knowledge strikes me as talking about issues with which you have no first-hand experience. Like saying, “Ubuntu is just Debian with a different theme,” to you circa 2005.

Sure, from the outside, Ubuntu *did* look like Debian with a brown theme. But then, no real sense of a project can be gained from the outside.

My indignation is not caused by some perceived personal affront, but by the fact that you seem to be speaking with some authority about processes in which you have not participated. And that’s not fair.

There’s no point leaning on fatuous arguments about whether or not I’ve participated in that particular community — if you truly felt that was an important factor in my ability to answer your question, you wouldn’t have asked for my opinion in the first place.

But seriously: MariaDB really isn’t a fundamental revision of MySQL’s community structure. For sure, the project is building a community with different (better) values, more in line with effective Open Source development, but it is still broadly subject to the whims and fancies of the MySQL project. It is effectively a branch, not a fork, with a complementary community built around it.

Note: That is by no means a criticism of the objectives of the MariaDB project or your work within it. It is just, to my mind, an accurate reading of the situation. When Sun’s MySQL is no longer the de-facto branch, and they are compelled to participate in a community defined by the renegades (and the ODA folk are doing a pretty good job of creating that community so far)… that’s when it will be an unqualified, independent, successful and fundamental revision of MySQL’s community structure.

In the mean time, Drizzle has essentially made its own. Pretty fundamental.

(Back when I was doing evangelism for Canonical, I regularly received input about Ubuntu which I disagreed with — all of it, aside from the nasty and cantankerous, was useful. I generally found it more interesting and helpful to ask questions when someone raised an idea I disagreed with.)

But claiming that it’s not a “fundamental revision of MySQL’s … community structure,” when it’s my job to ensure that it is, and yourself not having participated in that community in any way whatsoever, does elicit a strong response. And I think you’d respond in the same way, were you in my shoes.

My analysis is this: While the MariaDB project clearly has a different approach to community engagement and development, it ultimately remains a satellite to the MySQL codebase and community. That has a huge impact on its capacity to be a “fundamental revision” in either sense.

Of the two, I think Drizzle is the obvious game-changer, both socially and technically. I don’t think this analysis is unfair or even negative. I have no reason to dislike MariaDB — I’m just answering your question.

Of course, none of that means MySQL or its close derivatives are irrelevant now, or likely to be in the near future… in fact, that’s precisely why the growing number of MySQL forks and branches are such good news.

We’re already seeing cooperation and consolidation among those branches. I will be very happy when we see distros shipping one of these in preference to MySQL.

But, even if that happens, Drizzle has an incredible future ahead of it, built on a firm foundation of clueful social and technical philosophy.