Red Hat says no MariaDB/MySQL decision made

Red Hat has stated that no decisions have been made in a choice between MySQL and MariaDB as the "default database" in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 (RHEL 7). In various media reports over the weekend, it was claimed that Red Hat had decided to "ditch MySQL" and move to MariaDB. The reports were based on a presentation at the Red Hat Summit last week where Senior Engineering Manager Radek Vokál, in charge of Developer Experience, said: "we are replacing MySQL with MariaDB" when discussing things the company is planning for RHEL 7. Vokál cited the ability to participate upstream with MariaDB's more open developers as a reason for the change and said: "MariaDB will be the main thing for us".

Red Hat's Director of Product Marketing, Mark Coggin, told various media outlets that the company has not made any decision or made an announcement about which database technology will be in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7. "We are also not in a position to confirm the features or databases planned for Red Hat Software Collections that will be offered with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7. Despite not sharing the details, databases will be offered as part of the overall solution when Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 ships," he said in email passed to various companies.

The apparent confusion over which database is to be default may be down to changes apparently taking place in how Red Hat packages RHEL and other software. Red Hat recently released a beta of Software Collections 1.0, a package of dynamic languages and databases, including MariaDB 5.5, MySQL 5.5 and PostgreSQL 9.2, which is available to RHEL subscribers. It follows on from the Developer Toolset 1.1 release in January, and its 2.0 beta in May, which offers the latest GCC compilers and other tools.

These collections could be the precursor to RHEL 7 packaging changes, with the core operating system and tools being shipped as RHEL 7 and various collections oriented at different developers being made available alongside. This would allow Red Hat to update databases, languages and development tooling at a more rapid pace without requiring an update to RHEL itself. Red Hat though, for its own tooling, may well be switching to MariaDB, but that is something which will only become apparent when the first betas of RHEL 7 arrive. According to Coggin there is still no release date for RHEL 7, though other product managers at Red Hat have said a beta should arrive by the end of the year.

(djwm)