These signatories span database administrators, architects, and developers from MySQL fork providers such as Percona, MariaDB, and PlanetScale, as well as engineers and executives from companies including Zoho, DigitalOcean, Vultr, and Pinterest, among others.
Open letter reflects growing unease over MySQL’s direction
Chief among the signatories’ concerns is how Oracle has managed updates to MySQL’s codebase, which they argue has cost the database a significant loss in market share. Developers and enterprises are increasingly gravitating toward PostgreSQL as demand surges for AI-driven workloads, where databases play a critical role in consolidating and serving data.
The letter also argued that not only are the MySQL updates “private” and sparse, but they also don’t even include features that are now table stakes for AI-driven workloads and have become standard across most databases, including the enterprise versions offered by Oracle, the signatories wrote in the letter.
