MySQL Project Concerns

Commentary on Oracle firing MySQL open-source team, project becoming rudderless, MariaDB financial problems, and potential impact on ecosystem

The future of MySQL is facing significant uncertainty following reports that Oracle laid off over 80% of the project’s team as part of a strategic shift toward its proprietary Heatwave product. This massive reduction in staff, which included the departure of key leadership, has left the open-source community feeling rudderless and concerned about the project’s long-term viability. Compounding these fears are the ongoing financial struggles at MariaDB, a combination that is increasingly driving developers and major corporations to migrate toward PostgreSQL. While rumors persist of a new company potentially stepping in to lead the open-source core, the current vacuum has left the entire ecosystem in a state of flux.

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> Am I living in a bubble?

There are rumblings that the MySQL project is rudderless after Oracle fired the team working on the open-source project in September 2025. Oracle is putting all its energy in its closed-source MySQL Heatwave product. There is a new company that is looking to take over leadership of open-source MySQL but I can't talk about them yet.

The MariaDB Corporation financial problems have also spooked companies and so more of them are looking to switch to Postgres.

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> There are rumblings that the MySQL project is rudderless after Oracle fired the team working on the open-source project in September 2025.

Not just the open-source project; 80%+ (depending a bit on when you start counting) of the MySQL team as a whole was let go, and the SVP in charge of MySQL was, eh, “moving to another part of the org to spend more time with his family”. There was never really a separate “MySQL Community Edition team” that you could fire, although of course there were teams that worked mostly or entirely on projects that were not open-sourced.

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