The Ford–Cadillac Parable
MariaDB is not “basically the same thing.”
It has evolved—deliberately, decisively, and according to its original open source roots.
Because MariaDB isn’t riding on someone else’s legacy.
We are building our own legacy. And we are the future.
MariaDB customers and community drive the roadmap.
Wrong.
“Are you the guy who builds Cadillacs?”
Our partners help ensure MariaDB runs everywhere—with every stack, on every cloud.
“No. I’m not building Cadillacs anymore.”
So yes—let’s be clear:
When MariaDB goes unnamed, the story gets distorted.
Contributors lose credit and visibility. Companies lose recognition. Innovation gets misplaced.
The Premise: A Familiar Conversation
We’re building MariaDB.
And it’s time everyone said the name out loud.
MariaDB plc leads the engineering and delivers the innovations that makes MariaDB enterprise-grade and production-ready.
In conversations from Jakarta to Frankfurt, the pattern repeats:
Cadillac kept the name.
So Ford walked away and started fresh.
Behind every release—whether it’s InnoDB performance, Optimizer enhancements, the fastest open source vector search, or Oracle compatibility improvements—stand thousands of hours of engineering and an ecosystem that evolves through open collaboration, not centralized control.
Years later, even as Ford cars became wildly successful, people kept asking:
In 1902, Henry Ford’s second car company was taken over by investors and renamed Cadillac. The designs were his. The engineering was his. But the brand? That now belonged to someone else.
We are not building Cadillacs anymore.
Why Recognition Matters
It took years before the public truly grasped the difference.
To which he had to answer—over and over again:
MariaDB runs banks, powers governments, scales global SaaS, and anchors the stacks of companies who care deeply about performance, transparency, and independence.
We’ve Already Taken the Stage
Partner: “We love MariaDB. We support it, we use it internally, and over 60% of our customers rely on it.”
Me: “Then why does your public messaging still lead with MySQL?”
(Pause)
Partner: “Well… the name is more familiar. And since MariaDB is a drop-in replacement, it’s basically the same thing, right?”
We’ve spent sixteen years building something stronger, leaner, and freer than what came before. And still, too often, the world defaults to the old label. That’s not just inaccurate—it’s limiting.
MariaDB Foundation safeguards the openness.
Ford built the future.
We’re not waiting for permission to lead.
We’re already leading.
