Who is Behind MariaDB?

The MariaDB project is the brainchild of Michael "Monty" Widenius, the founder of MySQL®, Monty Program Ab (now MariaDB Corporation), and a founding member of the MariaDB Foundation.

The core team consists of developers sponsored by the MariaDB Foundation, companies and individuals who are members of the Foundation, and people in the MariaDB community. MariaDB is a technocracy, and we want our core membership to reflect this.

The MariaDB Foundation's role is to be a steward of the MariaDB project. The Foundation also takes the responsibility of keeping the quality of the MariaDB project high. The MariaDB Foundation has assumed this stewardship from Monty Program Ab, which was the original driver until a foundation could be created.

A current list of active core contributors (MariaDB captains) can be found on Launchpad. Anyone with enough technical skill level who actively participates in the development of MariaDB can be part of this team. You don't have to work at the MariaDB Foundation, MariaDB Corporation, or at any other Foundation member company to be able to participate or commit code!

There is an active community around MariaDB that you can be part of. Their developer contributions can be found on the log of MariaDB contributors.

There have been some questions if MariaDB is a company or a community open source project. MariaDB is a community open source project because:

• It's driven by a non profit foundation.
• All code in MariaDB is open source. The MariaDB Foundation does not and does not intend to release any closed source modules to MariaDB. The same goes for companies which are members of the Foundation.
• Anyone who matches the criteria of a MariaDB captain can get commit rights to the MariaDB code base. There are many different companies and individuals among them.
• Anyone can contribute articles to the MariaDB Knowledge Base with very few restrictions.
• The MariaDB Foundation manages the MariaDB trademark, but gives broad rights to it to others.