MySQL’s widespread use is challenged by developer preference
MySQL turned 30 in May 2025. That’s impressive. Not many technologies keep running strong for three decades, and especially not at MySQL’s scale. It’s the second most popular database system globally according to DB-Engines, and 6sense calls it the most widely deployed relational database in the world. That says something about its proven reliability and market integration.
But popularity doesn’t always translate into influence going forward. Developer sentiment is clearly shifting. PostgreSQL now dominates developer attention and admiration. In the 2025 Stack Overflow Developer Survey, 55.6% of developers said they use PostgreSQL. Only 40.5% said the same about MySQL. Admiration gaps were wider, 46.5% of developers appreciate PostgreSQL, while just 20.5% admire MySQL. This isn’t just a beauty contest. It reflects what engineers trust when building new systems.
PostgreSQL is seen as modern, powerful, and supported by an open source community that moves fast. That kind of developer energy doesn’t just result in code, it creates gravity. Tech ecosystems don’t stay in place; they move where the excitement is. MySQL still handles millions of production systems, and it’s a solid choice for many workloads. But developers are telling us something: they want precision tooling and faster innovation.
If you’re leading a business that relies on MySQL, don’t panic. But listen. The gap in enthusiasm points to a need for change, not because the engine’s broken, but because the drivers are picking other roads.
PostgreSQL’s vibrant open source community fuels its growth
PostgreSQL has something MySQL currently lacks, a dynamic, fast-moving, and global-scale open source community. This isn’t just cosmetic. It matters deeply to the pace of innovation. In PostgreSQL, dozens of companies contribute code, ideas, tooling, and support. That means more testing, more ideas in production, and faster iterations. New features don’t have to wait for roadmap approval from a single vendor. They come when someone builds them, and others validate them. It’s decentralized innovation. It works.
In contrast, the MySQL community is relatively quiet. Oracle has done a strong job keeping the database stable since it acquired Sun Microsystems in 2010. But that’s not the same as being part of a vibrant open source ecosystem. Oracle’s attention has leaned more toward the paid versions, MySQL Enterprise Edition and MySQL HeatWave in the cloud. The free Community Edition, which is where much open source momentum would naturally live, hasn’t seen the same innovation pace or community lift.
At the adoption level, PostgreSQL now benefits from what you could call “organic scale.” Engineering teams push for it, ops teams are familiar with it, and there’s a trusted community behind it. The level of trust in PostgreSQL’s development path makes it a safer long-term bet for decision-makers, especially in environments where agility, extensibility, and roadmap clarity drive strategy.
If you’re thinking long-term for your architecture and looking at factors like flexibility, modernization, and community resilience, PostgreSQL gives you leverage. Executives weighing database choices should evaluate not just system performance, but the velocity and direction of the ecosystem carrying it. That’s what shapes future returns.
MySQL community edition lags in innovation compared to enterprise innovations
Oracle has put strong engineering behind MySQL Enterprise and cloud offerings like MySQL HeatWave. These tools are feature-rich and take aim at data-intensive workloads, including machine learning. HeatWave even includes support for vector search, an essential capability for AI-driven applications that rely on identifying patterns, proximity, or similarity in large datasets.
But the open source Community Edition of MySQL doesn’t benefit from these same technical upgrades. While it can store vector data, it lacks core functionality such as index-based search or approximate nearest neighbor lookup. That gap makes it less useful for AI or other advanced data workloads. In fast-growth sectors, this kind of technical limitation makes decisions easier. Developers and architects won’t wait. They’ll switch to tools that deliver the capabilities they need out of the box.
This split in innovation, between the commercial versions and the community version, has created tension in how MySQL is perceived. Enterprises that favor stability and traditional workloads may continue to rely on MySQL. But those driving AI, high-performance analytics, and experimental architecture are already looking elsewhere. The lack of feature parity dampens interest and trust in the open source version.
For businesses, this signals a strategic issue. If core technology cannot keep pace with emerging data needs, teams will introduce parallel platforms to fill the gaps. That adds cost, complexity, and risk to operations. Closing the innovation gap between editions should be a priority, for Oracle, and for any companies invested in MySQL’s long-term open source viability.
Declining Oracle-led development signals reduced technical momentum for MySQL
MySQL has historically benefited from the deep infrastructure investment of Oracle. But there’s now hard data pointing to a shift in that support. In early 2025, each quarter brought 65 bug fixes. The more recent MySQL 8.4.7 release only delivered 21. That’s a sharp 68% decrease. It’s not about the absolute number of bugs, it’s about the pace of product maintenance. A slowdown of this kind indicates a reduced engineering push from Oracle.
One likely cause is internal attrition. The text notes a loss of key Oracle staff, which has likely disrupted the development pipeline. For most operators of business-critical systems, consistent patches, updates, and fixes are non-negotiable. Lags in support timelines introduce risk, especially in regulated industries or environments with high uptime requirements.
This isn’t theoretical. A lower update cadence means extended windows where known bugs remain unpatched. That can affect performance, security, and integration reliability. Decisions around upgrading, scaling, or extending MySQL become harder to make when the development roadmap is unclear or slow to advance.
Executives responsible for technology portfolio planning should treat these signals seriously. Even if current MySQL deployments remain stable today, the ability to trust in a vendor’s velocity and sustained investment plays a significant role in platform sustainability. Leadership must evaluate whether there’s enough clarity about what’s next for MySQL, or whether diversification of tooling should be accelerated.
External pressures and internal stagnation may catalyze governance shifts
In today’s software landscape, governance drives momentum. MySQL hasn’t experienced the kind of foundational disruption that often propels open source communities into revitalized growth. But that may no longer be the case. The combination of stalled development, reduced internal engineering efforts at Oracle, and increasing feature gaps in the Community Edition point to an ecosystem at an inflection point.
When other projects encountered similar challenges, specifically, closed licensing or vendor-centric development, developers and commercial users responded by forking. This happened with Redis, leading to Valkey. It happened with Terraform, leading to OpenTofu. In these cases, the forked projects moved under open foundations, pulling in broader contributor ecosystems and reigniting innovation.
So far, MySQL has avoided this kind of split. But the current signals suggest that a major decision is looming. A fork backed by committed contributors could shift governance toward a more neutral structure. Alternatively, Oracle could adjust its approach to allow broader strategic leadership from the community.
For executives, these governance scenarios aren’t theoretical exercises. They directly impact technology strategy. A forked, truly community-led MySQL would likely bring faster enhancements and better feature alignment with market demands. It would also reduce dependency on a single vendor for roadmap direction. On the other hand, fragmentation introduces complexity, especially for enterprises with long-term investments in the official Oracle-backed distributions.
At a time when database strategy is tightly connected to scalability, developer productivity, and AI-readiness, the structure behind innovation matters. Monitoring this shift closely, and preparing for potential structural platform changes, is now critical.
Revitalizing MySQL’s future relies on renewed community engagement and decentralized leadership
While MySQL’s momentum has slowed, there’s still a large user base and deep technical knowledge surrounding it. The core technology remains reliable, scalable, and highly efficient in well-defined use cases. Many applications, especially in traditional web application stacks, still benefit from its simplicity and performance profile. But to regain forward pace, MySQL needs more than passive users. It needs active participants.
There are calls for developers and companies to re-engage. The MySQL Foundation is pushing for stronger community participation, including event involvement and shared discussion spaces like their Slack channel. The goal is clear: move toward a future where innovation isn’t bottlenecked by corporate hierarchy, but driven by the strategic needs of the global development community.
That future depends on execution. A larger, more distributed contributor base could push for faster bug resolutions, introduce critical AI-adjacent features, and close the growing gap with PostgreSQL. Decentralized leadership of development also offers a more transparent, collaborative roadmap, a necessary condition for winning back developer confidence.
From a business standpoint, supporting community-driven innovation provides upside. It builds flexibility into the tech stack, lowers platform risk, and helps align tooling with real-world engineering needs. Whether MySQL advances through a revitalized community or through a structural fork, decision-makers should evaluate where and how to plug in. Passive use isn’t enough anymore. It’s time to shape the outcome.
The MySQL database still has a future worth building. But that future will be written by contributors, not just users.
Key takeaways for decision-makers
- MySQL is facing developer loyalty decline: Despite strong deployment, only 20.5% of developers admire MySQL compared to 46.5% for PostgreSQL. Leaders should track developer sentiment closely, as it increasingly influences platform adoption and internal innovation velocity.
- PostgreSQL’s community strength accelerates adoption: Its vibrant, decentralized contributor base drives faster development and broader trust. Executives should consider ecosystems, not just features, when evaluating long-term technology decisions.
- Community edition lacks competitive innovation: MySQL Community Edition trails in features critical to AI and modern workloads. Leaders relying on MySQL should assess whether current capabilities align with emerging data and ML strategies.
- Reduced oracle focus slows MySQL progress: Bug fix output dropped by nearly 70% in 2025, signaling diminished investment. Decision-makers should monitor update cycles as an indicator of platform health and rethink dependencies on single-vendor ecosystems.
- A governance shift may be approaching: Structural stagnation and precedent from other open projects suggest a potential fork or leadership reorganization. Executives should stay ahead of governance changes that could impact enterprise continuity and roadmap alignment.
- Community engagement is now critical for MySQL’s future: Revitalizing innovation depends on broader participation and less centralized control. Leaders should support or engage with community efforts to maintain MySQL viability in modern application stacks.
