MariaDB again faces questions over Galera's open source future

With support for MySQL Galera Cluster ending in two months, open source observers are again questioning how much of the technology's future MariaDB plc intends to keep in the community edition. The company says Galera remains a core, open source component of MariaDB while it develops separate replication capabilities for enterprise customers. In March, MariaDB, the company behind the database forked from MySQL, reversed course and announced that MariaDB Community Server 12.3 would continue to include the Galera Cluster libraries. Galera is GPLv2-licensed database clustering technology created by Codership Oy, which MariaDB plc acquired in May 2025. Developers had previously noticed the clustering libraries were being removed from future versions of MariaDB Community Server, the open source database stewarded by the MariaDB Foundation. Frédéric Descamps, open source evangelist at the MariaDB Foundation, said at the time that there had been a "friendly reset" in the company's relationship with the open source community. He added that the concerns about the future of Galera in MariaDB were a "predictable outcome of people caring about continuity." Those concerns have resurfaced as the September 30 end-of-life date approaches for MySQL Galera Cluster. Announcing the decision in December, Max Mether, co-founder and vice president of server product management at MariaDB plc, urged users to migrate, saying: "This extended timeline gives your team ample opportunity to leverage the new in-place migration method and secure your future with MariaDB Galera Cluster." He also said the company was focusing innovation and new feature development exclusively on MariaDB Galera Cluster. "This consolidation allows the combined engineering team to deliver more powerful and advanced clustering features, ensuring industry-leading high availability for MariaDB," he said. Others have questioned whether migrating from MySQL to MariaDB is a price worth paying to remain with Galera. In a social media post, Marco Tusa, MySQL Technical leader at open source consultancy Percona, said: "Migrating to MariaDB isn't a simple 'drop-in' binary swap. Years of divergence in data dictionaries, [transaction] formats, and system tables mean moving to MariaDB is essentially adopting a completely different database." Percona provides its own alternative clustering technology for MySQL, XtraDB Cluster (PXC), which it says is open source with no proprietary hurdles. The consultancy also maintains its own tracking fork of Galera with critical stability fixes. In response, Descamps said that for users who specifically want to remain on the MySQL codebase, PXC proposes an "understandable and practical transition." However, he added that remaining aligned with upstream MySQL would leave users dependent on Oracle's long-term decisions for the database. "It may be the most convenient path for preserving today's MySQL compatibility, but that does not automatically make it the clearest long-term open source strategy," he said. He added: "most of the team that worked on Galera" appear to be developing a more enterprise solution. "Will that become open source one day? That's not the current direction.". Other open source developers would be free to add to Galera, "but currently, the previous Codership team is working on something different," he said. Vikas Mathur, chief product officer at MariaDB plc, said in a statement: "Innovation in the MySQL ecosystem has stalled, and users know it. MySQL customers are actively looking for a database that's moving forward, and that's exactly what we're offering. With the original Galera team now a part of MariaDB, moving to MariaDB Galera Cluster is an upgrade, not a workaround, and we've given users an extended runway through September 2026, plus a near-zero-downtime migration path, to make the move with confidence." The Register understands that maintaining a separate MySQL build no longer fits MariaDB plc's commercial focus. The company nevertheless insists that Galera remains a core component of its platform. Separately, MariaDB is developing proprietary replication capabilities for demanding enterprise use cases. The company says this work follows a distinct development path from open source Galera and will be offered as a premium feature. ®

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