MySQL Community Weighs Forking as Oracle's Commitment Comes Under Scrutiny

The MySQL community is at a pivotal moment, confronting questions about the database's future direction under Oracle's ownership. A recent meeting in San Francisco brought together developers from companies like Percona and PlanetScale to discuss potential paths forward, including the possibility of forking the open-source database.

The Catalyst for Concern

Recent developments have triggered this reassessment. Oracle has reduced its MySQL core development team, a move that deeply affected MySQL's original developer, Michael "Monty" Widenius, who described himself as "heartbroken" by the news. Concurrently, the number of commits to the MySQL project has fallen dramatically. These factors combined have led some community members to believe MySQL is reaching a critical crossroads.

Vadim Tkachenko, CTO at Percona and a former MySQL AB employee, frames the situation as MySQL being at a fork in the road. The community must now choose between continuing under Oracle's governance or adopting a different model. Peter Zaitsev, Percona's co-founder and a MySQL performance expert, uses the metaphor of a boiling frog to describe Oracle's gradual approach: "They are moving more and more features to their cloud and enterprise software, and then they have been reducing MySQL staff, but they have not done anything drastic. The result for the MySQL community, though, is not great. It's not really getting MySQL developed to its full potential."

Community Response and Options

The San Francisco meeting, which included a representative from Oracle, explored several potential futures for MySQL. The primary options discussed were:

1. Continuing under Oracle's governance - Maintaining the current structure with Oracle as the primary steward
2. Creating a community fork - Developing MySQL independently with community governance

Within the fork option, two distinct approaches were identified:

Hard Fork: This would create a completely independent codebase, similar to MariaDB's 2009 fork. MariaDB, founded by Widenius, remains open source and is governed by a foundation with ties to MariaDB plc. It has developed separately from MySQL since its inception.

Tracking Fork: This approach maintains closer compatibility with MySQL while adding patches and enhancements. Percona's Server for MySQL exemplifies this model. As Zaitsev explains, "We apply certain patches, and certain other changes, but we are always tracking that [against MySQL]. A tracking fork typically brings more compatibility than a hard fork, far more compatible with MySQL compared with MariaDB."

Industry Stakes and Precedents

The discussion extends beyond individual developers to companies whose businesses depend on MySQL. Sam Lambert, co-founder and CEO of PlanetScale (which builds a database service around Vitess, a distributed MySQL-based database), emphasized MySQL's critical role: "MySQL is critical to the functioning of the web and powers millions of products. PlanetScale is committed to its future. We maintain our own fork of MySQL... We will always back MySQL as a technology and use our engineering resources to ensure its health."

The open-source community has precedent for wresting control from corporate stewards. In 2024, the Linux Foundation launched Valkey, forking Redis after its acquisition by a commercial entity. Valkey gained backing from major cloud providers including AWS, Google Cloud, and Oracle, as well as Percona. This demonstrates that when a critical open-source project's future appears uncertain, the community can mobilize significant resources to ensure its continuity.

Zaitsev noted that the MySQL group has already spoken with major cloud vendors and smaller cloud companies. "A lot of them have their customers [that] are feeling the pain from missing features in MySQL, like vector search for example," he said, though he declined to disclose specific commitments before any official announcement.

The Path Forward

The community plans further meetings, including one focused on European developers around FOSDEM 26 in Brussels. This suggests the discussion is still in its early stages, with more feedback needed before determining the best path forward.

The situation highlights a recurring tension in open-source software: the balance between corporate stewardship and community governance. While Oracle has invested in MySQL development over the years, recent changes have prompted questions about long-term commitment. The community's response—whether through continued collaboration with Oracle or through a fork—will determine MySQL's trajectory for years to come.

For developers and organizations relying on MySQL, this represents a moment of uncertainty but also potential opportunity. A community-driven fork could accelerate development of features like vector search that some users currently lack, while maintaining the database's open-source nature. However, it would also require significant coordination and resources to maintain compatibility and ensure smooth migration paths for existing users.

The coming months will likely reveal whether MySQL follows the path of Redis/Valkey or maintains its current structure under Oracle's continued stewardship.