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Comment by eatonphil | Hacker News Reader

Interestingly (though maybe this page is old), AWS seems to feel pretty strongly that MariaDB is the better choice.

https://aws.amazon.com/compare/the-difference-between-mariad...

Or maybe that's just how I read paragraphs like this:

> MariaDB is more scalable and offers a higher query speed when compared to MySQL. This makes it good for managing large-sized data. You will also find more features in MariaDB that MySQL doesn’t have, like sequence storage engines and virtual columns. You can also use multiple engines in one table.

> However, MySQL has been around for much longer than MariaDB. Some organizations prefer the enterprise support that MySQL offers.

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Some information in that post is out of date -- for example, MySQL has supported virtual columns for eight years now.

Other things in there are a bit of a head-scratcher. Using multiple storage engines in one table is a terrible idea ACID-wise, since each storage engine has its own separate transaction implementation (if it has one at all). If I was to list meaningful features in a MySQL vs MariaDB comparison, that one wouldn't make the list at all...

In any case, AWS built Aurora on MySQL and not MariaDB. There are numerous possible reasons, but it seems like an important data point to consider.

Oracle goes ape shit over their java db connector, and has all sorts of history of royally screwing companies over.

I know multiple companies that do java, and steered clear of mysql as a result.

EG, fear

mysql-connector-j which us Java devs reference in pom.xml in our Spring Boot projects is open source, GPL2:

https://opensource.stackexchange.com/questions/13287/mysql-c...

Where is the ape shit?

I wouldn't classify it as "ape shit", but the MySQL connector used to be LGPL. Now that's it's GPL any software that bundles it needs to be GPL as well. I'm guessing that Oracle has contacted some companies about commercial licensing. The alternative is to just use the MariaDB connector, which is still LGPL and is MySQL compatible.

As long as you keep you do not give your server side software to other people, GPL should be fine, right?

If you're not distributing your software, then yes, it's fine. It's mainly an issue for companies who license their software to other companies.

Even if you don't distribute your software it's good to be at least aware of your bill-of-materials. If your company decides to pivot and start licensing out the software then you want to be able to flag any issues like this quickly.

GPL forbids you from using this library in a commercial product (any product that doesn’t use a compatible FOSS license) without buying a commercial license from Oracle.

The PostgreSQL JDBC driver doesn’t present this problem to you.

You can use it in a commercial product, but if you distribute the commercial product it's going to require you to adhere to the GPL, which obviously has practical implications.

You can use it in an internal product that you use commercially, even if the program interacts with external users (e.g. web server) which is a big reason why AGPL exists.

Although, it's best to aware of what internal tools and software may require GPL distribution. For example it's the position of the FSF that distribution of internal tools to contractors requires adherence to the GPL.

https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#InternalDistributi...

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