No more trust in Oracle: Community foundation wants to correct MySQL's course
Oracle's chaotic course with MySQL forces the community to act. They have now founded the OurSQL Foundation to promote and further develop MySQL themselves.
(Image: Sundry Photography / Shutterstock.com)
- Manuel Masiero
MySQL runs on millions of websites, but until now there was no independent voice from the community. The OurSQL Foundation now wants to change that. The newly founded non-profit organization aims to promote the long-term use and further development of the open-source database, independently of Oracle's strategic decisions. However, it does not explicitly rule out cooperation with Oracle. Prerequisite: It must be beneficial for both sides.
The founding of the non-profit OurSQL Foundation did not come out of the blue. Rather, it is a response to the MySQL community's lack of trust in MySQL brand owner Oracle. Their dissatisfaction recently culminated in an open letter. In it, Oracle was criticized for a lack of transparency, resource problems, and a lack of say in the further development of MySQL. The reaction was limited: Oracle had recently announced public discussion rounds to strengthen the MySQL community in a blog post.
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Independent Platform in the MySQL Ecosystem
According to a press release, the OurSQL Foundation sees itself as an independent community organization that wants to bring MySQL users, developers, and companies together at a virtual round table.
Planned initiatives include vendor-neutral governance, public bug tracking, a tool and project portal, and transparency logs for security patches. Events and workshops could also be part of the OurSQL Foundation's offerings to make MySQL attractive for future generations of developers and users.
The foundation's founding board includes well-known personalities from the MySQL community, giving the OurSQL Foundation high credibility from the outset. Founding members include, for example, Vadim Tkachenko (President of the OurSQL Foundation) and Peter Zaitsev, both co-founders of Percona, as well as Sunny Bains, Software Architect at PingCAP. Also on board is Tomas Ulin, former Vice President of MySQL Engineering at Oracle, who was dismissed in September 2025 when around 70 members of the MySQL team lost their jobs.
(mro)
