back to article Open source, says me: Alibaba chucks MariaDB a $27m funding round

Chinese Amazon-chaser Alibaba has chucked a chunk of cash at open-source-database-flinger MariaDB, leading a $27m funding round in the biz. Alibaba is already a core sponsor of the MariaDB Foundation, and the Finnish company already offers Database-as-a-Service solutions on Alibaba Cloud. The continued partnership will give …

  1. Mark 110

    Branding

    They really need to do something with that 'Alibaba' name. For me its just got too many negative connotations around less than honest traders in middle eastern bazaars. I'm not even sure where in western culture I get that from.

    And yeah I know that's a racial stereotype but its one that exists so the branding always makes me not want to look.

    Edit: Just read up. So its from Alibaba and the 40 thieves. And whilst in the story Alibaba isn't a thief my brain seems to associate the word with thieves. Oh well.

    1. This post has been deleted by its author

    2. Lars Silver badge
      Thumb Up

      Re: Branding

      Oh well, I for instance don't associate Amazon with the river but with something sexier.

      Alibaba should of course be associated with a Bazaar which it is. Wonder if Bezos had any such associations.

      Anyway people get used to names quite quickly. Smart guy Jack Ma, and I get the impression that there is more to him than just money. That goes for Bezos too.

      1. DropBear

        Re: Branding

        I'm not quite as sure of that - I'm well aware of the "40 thieves" story, and it would never consciously override a deliberate intent to use the site, but I can also attest to the name causing a permanent nasty aversion in the back of my mind much like the OP noted. It's probably different in an Eastern context so it may not matter much, but I'm pretty sure the name did them no favours _whatsoever_ in any western setting.

  2. skytrench

    Nice with some funding!

    Mariadb needs more development. A Feature like "Parallel Execution of SQL Statements", so more than 1 core can handle a SQL statement would be nice for those heavy queries on big tables. And hopefully not Innodb only!

    1. mortn

      Re: Nice with some funding!

      +1 for the parallel execution feature request.

      What's with the the "not InnoDB only"? Normally you get a load of storage engines and IMHO the XtraDB that comes out of the box is InnoDB on steroids.

      1. skytrench

        Re: Nice with some funding!

        Actually InnoDB is back in mariadb 10.2. I would hope the parallel feature to be independent of the engine and work for example with myisam too.

    2. Andrew 39

      Re: Nice with some funding!

      We already do have some Parallel Execution of SQL Statements with MariaDB ColumnStore. The engine will perform a map/reduce style execution of the query to multiple nodes and each node running multiple threads for each query.

  3. Richard Tobin

    Open, says me

    That joke is 80 years old:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0MT4t5SHJ0

    at around 14:55

  4. Charlie Clark Silver badge

    MariaDB is one of the credible open source alternatives to MySQL

    That's a bit like saying gonorrhoea is a credible alternative to syphilis

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