One of the big problems is Oracle decide what does/doesn’t go in. Understandable, but they provide no insight into the decision making process, why patches don’t get merged, or even if/when they take it. They used to post worklogs for features they were working on which gave some insights, but they’ve stopped doing that now too. Imagine working on a new feature for months, submitting a patch only to find out oracle have went their own route, many people will just say what’s the point. Last updated work log was in 2021: https://dev.mysql.com/worklog/

Edit: As an example, one of the optimizations called out in this repo was submitted in October 2023. “Thank you for the report and contribution.” and then radio silence ever since.

https://bugs.mysql.com/bug.php?id=112737 https://www.percona.com/blog/what-oracle-missed-we-fixed-mor...

From FAQ:

16. Why aren't these improvements merged into the official MySQL?

Optimizations have been recommended to the official team and have received acknowledgment. However, they are assigned low priority in official bug fixes. Simple optimizations may take considerable time to be integrated, while complex ones might never be implemented.

As a result, the decision was made to open-source the MySQL optimized version to ensure effective application in high-end scenarios.