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The landscape of relational open source database systems (RDBMS) is currently undergoing a significant change. MySQL and MariaDB, for years the standards in many IT infrastructures, are under increased scrutiny from the community. For IT decision-makers and system administrators, this raises the question of the long-term planning security of their infrastructure.
We have analyzed the current situation and will provide you with a well-founded decision-making aid for your next projects.
What has changed with MySQL and MariaDB?
For a long time, MySQL and MariaDB were the undisputed standards. However, governance models have shifted and there have been discussions about this in the international developer community in recent months, how MySQL and MariaDB in particular will develop in the long term. Reports on Layoffs at Oraclethe approaching end of support for popular versions and the takeover of MariaDB by financial investors are causing uncertainty:
- MySQL (Oracle): Development is increasingly taking place behind closed doors. Observations by the community show that public commit activity in the official repository has drastically decreased since the end of 2025 [1, 3]. The community is increasingly criticizing the fact that Oracle's development model for MySQL remains formally open source, but in practice offers only limited participation and transparency [2]. In addition, the widely used version MySQL 8.0 will officially end its support in April 2026 (End of Life) [5].
- MariaDB: After years of economic turbulence, MariaDB plc was acquired in 2024 by the investor K1 Investment Management and delisted from the stock exchange [4]. Although this ensures its continued existence, it changes the focus. While the MariaDB Foundation continues to protect the open source base, the commercial side is increasingly concentrating on cloud services such as SkySQL and enterprise features [4.4].
The alternative: Why PostgreSQL is winning more and more often
More and more companies are switching to PostgreSQL. The reason is the Maximum independence. PostgreSQL does not belong to any company, but is supported by a global, vendor-independent community [6.3].
- No vendor lock-in: No sudden license changes due to shareholder decisions.
- Broader feature set: PostgreSQL often offers more modern features (e.g. materialized views, better JSON performance), which MySQL/MariaDB incorporates late or not at all [6.1, 6.2].
Decision support: What should you do now?
Despite all the discussions, there is no immediate need for action. There are no known acute security problems. There is therefore no urgent need to migrate until the end of support. However, anyone using MySQL 8.0 should schedule the upgrade to 8.4 LTS now, as regular upstream updates will no longer be provided from April 2026. We recommend the following for your strategy:
Our conclusion
The question today is not so much whether a system performs "better", but who is behind it. While MySQL and MariaDB are driven more by corporate strategies and investors, PostgreSQL remains the most stable open source constant. These differences are particularly important for the Long-term planning relevant, not for ongoing operations.
