MySQL
| License | FOSS problems | Maintenance | SSO | Users | Tested |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GPLv2Copyleft license. If you distribute it, modified or not, you must publish the source under GPLv2 too. No network-service clause — running it as a hosted service doesn't trigger that. | Dual-licensed, Oracle-owned, commercial tier gated behind a separate license | Active | — | Unlimited | ❌ |
Evaluation
What it is
MySQL is the relational database MariaDB forked from, now owned by Oracle since its 2010 acquisition of Sun Microsystems. It's dual-licensed — GPLv2 for the community edition, a separate commercial license for Oracle's enterprise features — and remains one of the most widely deployed databases in the world, with an enormous ecosystem of tooling and hosting built around it.
Why it could be useful
Ubiquity. If a piece of self-hosted software only documents itself against MySQL by name rather than "MySQL or MariaDB," running MySQL directly removes a layer of compatibility guessing. Familiarity is real too — more existing tutorials, forum answers, and hosting-provider tooling assume MySQL specifically than assume its fork.
Why not to go for it
Oracle's ownership is the same category of concern as IBM's ownership of Terraform — a single commercial entity controlling the roadmap of software this deeply embedded in other people's infrastructure, with a dual-license structure already built to gate features by tier. MariaDB exists specifically to route around that, stays compatible enough for most uses, and doesn't carry the ownership risk.