> Witness the fact that MySql is still deployed more than MariaDb. The MySql brand is very strong, even if the MariaDb product is superior.
If it were ... but it isn't, quite to the contrary.
However look at Openoffice, where libreoffice clearly won.
Been suggesting to a non-technical OpenOffice-using writer friend to at least give LibreOffice a try but it ain't happening. The name is a lot stickier than the actual product or people behind it.
They didn’t suggest StarOffice?
https://db-engines.com/en/ranking
The calculation explained on the page wouldn't rank MariaDB properly. Debian's MySQL is MariaDB but many people are calling it MySQL so it increases the ranking of MySQL. Job offers with MySQL sometimes talk about MariaDB.
Whether that would be enough to rank MariaDB higher, I can't say.
I always thought of MySQL as the specification and MariaDB as an implementation?
No, that's not correct. MariaDB is a "hard fork" of MySQL, and they've both grown in different directions. MariaDB used to cherry-pick code from MySQL 5.x, but hasn't been "drop in" compatible for quite a long time, especially since MySQL 8.0 which came out 7 years ago.
Even just looking at table design and schema management functionality, here's my increasingly-long rundown of subtle differences in features and syntax: https://www.skeema.io/blog/2023/05/10/mysql-vs-mariadb-schem...
https://db-engines.com/en/ranking_definition
I wouldn’t trust the data there very much.
Large tech companies (especially in the US) seem to strongly favor MySQL over MariaDB. For example, when these companies discuss MySQL, they're literally using Oracle MySQL or a patch-set on top of it such as Percona Server -- Meta/Facebook, GitHub, Shopify, Uber, Square, Pinterest, Twilio, Etsy, and many others that have done conference talks about upgrading from MySQL 5.7 to MySQL 8.0.
AWS Aurora for MySQL is based on Oracle MySQL, without a MariaDB variant. Vitess only supports MySQL and not MariaDB. Between these two facts, you can ascertain a lot of companies are using MySQL under the hood.
Even in terms of "regular" managed DB hosted, only AWS RDS actively offers both MySQL and MariaDB variants; Azure had both but has chosen to drop their MariaDB product and focus only on MySQL. Google CloudSQL offers MySQL and has never supported MariaDB.
This is not to say MariaDB is bad! Quite the contrary. Just responding to the common incorrect HN refrain that Oracle MySQL is dead.
As for which product is "superior", in my experience they both have unique strengths and features that the other lacks. MariaDB has especially been adding some great FOSS features lately. MySQL is focusing more on enterprise/non-FOSS in the last couple years, but prior to that they added a ton of unique stuff to MySQL 8 as FOSS.