Community push intensifies to free MySQL from Oracle’s control amid stagnation fears

Pressure is building on Oracle to loosen its grip on MySQL, with a group of database veterans, developers, and long-time contributors urging the company to transition the open source database to an independent foundation model.

The call, articulated in an open letter, reflects mounting concern about MySQL’s development velocity, roadmap transparency, and role in an increasingly AI-driven data ecosystem.

The letter itself has received at least 248 signatures so far.

These signatories span database administrators, architects, and developers from MySQL fork providers such as Percona, MariaDB, and PlanetScale, as well as engineers and executives from companies including Zoho, DigitalOcean, Vultr, and Pinterest, among others.

Open letter reflects growing unease over MySQL’s direction

Chief among the signatories’ concerns is how Oracle has managed updates to MySQL’s codebase, which they argue has cost the database a significant loss in market share. Developers and enterprises are increasingly gravitating toward PostgreSQL as demand surges for AI-driven workloads, where databases play a critical role in consolidating and serving data.

The letter also argued that not only are the MySQL updates “private” and sparse, but they also don’t even include features that are now table stakes for AI-driven workloads and have become standard across most databases, including the enterprise versions offered by Oracle, the signatories wrote in the letter.

In fact, Percona co-founder Vadim Tkachenko, who was one of the co-authors of the letter, told InfoWorld that enterprises’ concern around MySQL’s direction under Oracle had reached a “critical” level.

So much so that enterprises were looking at MySQL fork-providers and cloud providers, such as AWS, for new features and innovation, citing what they perceive as stagnation in the core MySQL project, Tkachenko added.

However, the co-founder pointed out that the interest from enterprises combined with the innovations at the fork-and cloud-provider level does not help move MySQL forward, but rather creates confusion and fragmentation: “Often, forks are not compatible with each other and with upstream (core OSS MySQL), which creates major barriers for adoption and migrations.”

As AI workloads rise, MySQL loses ground to PostgreSQL

Analysts agree with Tkachenko. “The concerns being raised in the open letter about MySQL’s development velocity and governance are consistent with what I have seen,” said Stephanie Walter, leader of the AI stack at HyperFRAME Research.

“The database layer is becoming an AI system dependency. When developers and enterprises feel upstream is slow or opaque on modern requirements, they don’t just complain. They route around it, most likely to something like PostgreSQL,” Walter added.

Echoing Walter, dbinsight chief analyst Tony Baer pointed out that MySQL forks indeed create lock-ins because of their unique individual extensions, resulting in challenges around migration.

The foundation proposal: what signatories want

Nonetheless, Tkachenko and other signatories do see an alternative to rescue MySQL out of the alleged rut: Oracle accepting the proposal to place MySQL under an independent, non-profit foundation.

Under the proposed model outlined in the open letter, MySQL would be governed by a neutral, non-profit foundation with a technical steering committee representing Oracle, fork providers, cloud vendors, and the broader contributor community.

The foundation would oversee roadmap planning, release governance, and contributor access, while allowing Oracle to retain its commercial MySQL offerings and trademarks.

Signatories argue that this structure would protect Oracle’s commercial interests as well as give vendors and enterprises more confidence around the database due to transparent roadmaps, updates, and long-term technical direction while reducing fragmentation across forks.

The foundation may not fix the power dynamics

Analysts, however, didn’t seem too confident about the foundation model proposed in the letter.

“It won’t fully resolve the core power dynamics if Oracle retains the trademark and the effective release pipeline,” Walter said, adding that the proposed model may help with the coordination and contribution process — another concern expressed by the signatories.

Explaining further, Walter pointed out that the proposed structure contrasts with autonomous, community-led projects such as PostgreSQL, whose governance model has played a meaningful role in sustaining contributor trust and accelerating long-term adoption.

PostgreSQL, according to a 2025 Stack Overflow survey, leads MySQL in terms of usage and popularity.

The decline in MySQL’s popularity could be directly linked to a sheer drop in the number of contributors and commits over the last few years.

Julia Vural, software engineering manager at Percona, wrote in a blog post that the pool of active contributors to MySQL had dropped to around 75 by Q3 2025, compared to 135 active contributors in Q4 2017.

Similarly, the total number of commits has declined from 22,360 in 2010 to 4,730 in 2024, Vural added.

Other factors could include recent layoffs at the MySQL division at Oracle, including the departure of Oracle MySQL community manager Frederic Descamps, who moved to the MariaDB Foundation this week.

Oracle did not immediately respond to queries about the open letter.