Why MySQL Is Falling Behind PostgreSQL: Commit Trends and Oracle’s Role

Commit Activity Trend

DB‑Engines data shows MySQL’s annual commit count peaked in 2006‑2007 and has declined to roughly one‑sixth of that peak.

DB‑Engines Ranking Shift (2025)

PostgreSQL moved to the top position, while MySQL fell to second place with a score drop of 130.63 points compared to the previous year.

Stack Overflow 2025 Survey

The developer survey ranks PostgreSQL first and MySQL lower, reflecting current tool usage among developers rather than legacy installations.

Oracle’s Management Practices

According to former Amazon RDS for MySQL manager Otto, development work is performed behind closed doors. Pull requests are often marked as received without feedback, and the Git commit author list contains only Oracle employees, limiting external contributor visibility.

Technical Decline

MySQL 8.0.29 switched the default ALTER TABLE implementation to an aggressive in‑place algorithm that caused crashes and data loss in many edge cases. The issue was fully resolved only in MySQL 8.0.32.

After the 2018 release of MySQL 8.0, no major version arrived for six years; MySQL 8.1 was released in 2024 with few new features.

Benchmark data shows MySQL 9.5’s throughput on write‑heavy workloads is about 15 % lower than MySQL 8.0, indicating a performance regression.

Security Issues

In 2025 MySQL reported 123 CVEs, whereas MariaDB reported only 8, highlighting a security maintenance gap.

Oracle Product Positioning

Oracle’s website emphasizes paid offerings such as MySQL Enterprise, HeatWave, AI, and Cluster, while the community edition is only reachable via a deep link on the download page.

Historical Context

During Oracle’s acquisition of Sun, the EU raised competition concerns and required Oracle to make ten promises over five years before approving the deal.

Monty Widenius warned that Oracle might prioritize the enterprise edition and add closed‑source extensions, reducing community interest—a trend that appears to be materializing.

Outlook

Given current trajectories, PostgreSQL is expected to overtake MySQL in DB‑Engines rankings within the next two to three years. For new projects, MariaDB (a drop‑in replacement) or PostgreSQL are recommended alternatives.