Just a heads-up that today, October 12, is my last official working day at Monty Program. The change is bittersweet. Bitter because I will very much miss working with a very talented team. Sweet because I leave with a real sense of accomplishment. Monty hired me 2.5 years ago to drive awareness of MariaDB and to start building a viable community around it. I think these goals have been met to a large degree.
While I have been using vacation days recently, I did follow the announcements by Oracle regarding new closed, commercial extensions. Almost universally in these discussions MariaDB is put forth as a fully Free, drop-in replacement. The Reddit comments on Monty’s blog post about this issue are a good example. Also, Monty, Colin, and I have noticed that over the past 6 months or so the, “What is MariaDB?” conversations, especially at conference booths, had dropped precipitously. It’s exceedingly gratifying to see that MariaDB is a known solution, and that the work around it is seen as a true project, rather than a corporate product distributed freely. People know the project. A community has really started to coalesce. This being the case, the inevitable, “So … what’s next?” conversation with Monty ensued, and neither of us had an answer at our fingertips. So it’s time for me to move on and find a new challenge.
I would definitely not be leaving Monty Program unless Colin was staying. There is a lot of work in community gardening, and Colin is a rock star. The “What’s next?” conversation with Monty did not have to include stewardship of the MariaDB community. If you have questions about what’s happening in MariaDB world, Colin is the person to find henceforth.
It’s been a great time working for Monty Program, and I wish them and the MariaDB project every success. Starting up a project and a community around critical LAMP plumbing was an extremely fun ride!
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