Oracle has promised a “decisive new approach” to MySQL, the popular open source database it owns, following growing criticism of its approach and the prospect of a significant fork in the code.
In a blog post published last week, Big Red, which acquired MySQL with Sun Microsystems in 2009, said MySQL has new engineering leadership at the company and “a clear vision for 2026 and beyond.”
The move follows criticism of Oracle’s commitment to MySQL development over the past couple of years, which culminated in influential MySQL open source community members and users banding together to discuss their options, including forking the code and exploring an independent foundation model for governance.
In the post, Frederic Descamps, Oracle MySQL community manager, promised a new era of community engagement from the vendor. He said Oracle would take a three-pronged approach, firstly by introducing developer-focused features into the open source MySQL Community Edition. He said Big Red also planned to “extend and enrich” the developer community by offering more tools, frameworks, and connectors for MySQL.
“Finally, we are increasing transparency and encouraging broader community participation, ensuring that more voices help guide MySQL’s evolution,” he said.
He added that more details would become available in a public webinar. As part of the new approach, Oracle has committed to greater transparency, answering one common complaint that it simply dumped new code without much discussion.
“We will be publishing the development roadmap and facilitating contributions from the community – including worklogs and bug reports. There is great potential in community-driven extensibility, and we look forward to partnering directly with those interested in building the next generation of MySQL tools and extensions,” Descamps said.
At a pre-FOSDEM MySQL and Friends event in Belgium last month, Oracle promised to take steps to “repair” its relationship with the MySQL community by moving “commercial-only” features into the database application’s Community Edition and prioritizing developer needs. According to a summary seen by The Register, the key features include vector functions, which are considered critical for AI workloads.
Vadim Tkachenko previously worked for MySQL AB, the Swedish company that developed the database before it was bought by Sun Microsystems. Now CTO at open source consultancy Percona, he told us last month that MySQL was at a fork in the road under Oracle’s management, with the developer community now having to choose its future: either under Oracle or as part of a different model. A group of developers and users met in San Francisco in January to discuss their options.
MySQL’s founding developer, Michael “Monty” Widenius, last year said he was “heartbroken” on hearing the news of job losses at Oracle’s MySQL engineering team, while the system has seen a dramatic fall in the number of commits to the project. ®
