A New Era for MySQL: Heather VanCura and Jason Wilcox on Open Source, Community Governance, and Where MySQL Is Headed
“Through transparent roadmaps, community-driven collaboration, contributor programs, and the MySQL Governance model, we aim to create an environment where innovation can accelerate while preserving the reliability, compatibility, security, and operational excellence that organizations around the world depend on.”
Q1. Oracle has announced a “new era” of MySQL community engagement at MySQL’s 30th anniversary. Can you walk us through what specifically prompted this strategic shift, and what concrete changes can the community expect to see in how Oracle approaches MySQL development and governance?
HVC: Throughout 2025 we celebrated 30 years of MySQL and reflected on the past and present, but more importantly, the future. The MySQL Community team sought feedback from around the globe on how to lead the next generation of MySQL innovation and open source collaboration. We came to Jason in November and shared that feedback and proposed a plan to rebuild community trust. By December we agreed on a plan, calling it a new era of Community Engagement.
We have entered a deeper collaboration with the MySQL Community, focused on faster innovation, greater transparency, deeper community collaboration, and expanding the ecosystem. Starting with the April 2026 release, we’re delivering more features directly into the MySQL Community Edition core while preserving the stability customers rely on.
As part of this effort, we introduced the MySQL Governance model, which provides clear pathways for participation, community leadership, and long-term collaboration with the broader MySQL ecosystem. Together, these initiatives are designed to build deeper trust, accelerate innovation, and grow the MySQL ecosystem.
Q2. One of the most significant announcements is moving previously commercial-only features into the MySQL Community Edition. What drove this decision, and what other enterprise features are you planning to bring to the community edition in the coming months?
JW: Both our Community and our Customers are asking for stability and faster innovation. At the same time, they want more visibility into our roadmap and a stronger voice in shaping it. Driving some previously Enterprise-only features into the Community Edition addresses both needs, while we not only deliver those features, but we also build, prioritize, and deliver new features and innovations into MySQL.
With the GA of MySQL 9.7.0 LTS, MySQL moves from the 9.x innovation series to a new Long-Term Support release line. This begins the 9.7.x LTS series, giving users a stable branch to standardize on while continuing to build on the innovation delivered through the 9.x cycle.
This release matters not only because it establishes the next LTS baseline, but because it reflects a broader direction for MySQL. Over the last several releases, we have talked about giving users earlier visibility into what is coming, broadening access to important capabilities, and working more openly with the MySQL community. With MySQL 9.7.0 LTS, that direction is reflected in the product itself.
Several capabilities previously limited to MySQL Enterprise Edition are now available in MySQL Community Edition, while Dynamic Data Masking is now available in MySQL Enterprise Edition. Together, these changes make MySQL 9.7.0 LTS a meaningful release for DBAs, developers, and operators across both editions.
More capability in MySQL Community Edition
One of the biggest themes in MySQL 9.7.0 LTS is the continued expansion of MySQL Community Edition. Across 4 major technical areas, this release delivers 8 notable new Community Edition capabilities — a substantial broadening of what DBAs and developers can do with Community Edition.
The 4 major areas
- Replication observability and HA behavior
- Multi-threaded applier extended statistics
- Automatic Eviction & Rejoin
- Up-to-date Aware Primary Election
- Telemetry and observability integration
- Telemetry / OpenTelemetry support
- Modern application development
- MySQL JSON Duality Views
- Query optimization and performance
- Hypergraph Optimizer
- Profile-Guided Optimization (PGO)
Q3. Some community members have expressed concerns about MySQL’s development velocity and commit rates. Jason, as SVP of Data Services, what specific steps are you taking to address these concerns, and how do you plan to balance cloud service development with core MySQL innovation?
JW: Oracle has invested heavily in MySQL since 2010, and we hear feedback from the community. People want to see that investment show up in a more visible way, especially through faster delivery in the open. We’re working on that in a few concrete ways: getting more features into MySQL Community Edition, sharing more of the roadmap and worklogs, using Early Access releases to get feedback earlier, and creating more public forums where contributors can talk directly with the MySQL engineering team.
We’re also putting more structure around how people can participate, through the MySQL Governance model, contributor summits, design discussions, and clearer contribution paths. The goal is straightforward: be more open about where MySQL is going and give the community more practical ways to influence priorities, test features earlier, report issues, and contribute improvements. Cloud and core MySQL are not separate priorities for us — the core database is the foundation for Community, Enterprise, and HeatWave, so continued innovation in MySQL itself remains central to everything we’re doing.
In addition to accelerating innovation, we are creating more opportunities for community participation through public roadmaps, Early Access releases, public discussions, contributor summits, and the MySQL Governance model. Together, these initiatives provide greater transparency into our priorities while creating structured mechanisms for contributors to participate, provide feedback, and help influence the future direction of MySQL.
Q4. Oracle has published the MySQL Community roadmap and promised to facilitate community contributions through worklogs and bug reports. How will this differ from past practices, and what mechanisms are you putting in place to ensure transparent, bidirectional communication between Oracle’s engineering team and external contributors?
HV: With our Community Engagement Plans, MySQL customers and users get the best of both worlds: enterprise-grade stability and faster access to innovation. They’ll also have greater visibility into what’s coming and more opportunities to provide input, which helps them align MySQL with their own technology roadmaps. In addition to publishing select worklogs and CVE information, we have continued Labs for new features and early access releases leading up to the 9.7 launch, which will continue in future releases, with our next Early Access planned for early July. These provide valuable insight and transparency to community members and invaluable feedback to the engineering team.
We have organized a series of public discussions (four so far), with a fifth planned for July, as well as established a quarterly Contributor Summit and regular design meetings under the MySQL Governance model. The first Contributor Summit took place in May 2026, with a design meeting held the week prior. The next Contributor Summit is scheduled for August 2026 in Broomfield, Colorado.
The governance model provides structured pathways for participation through code contributions, testing, documentation, reviews, technical discussions, and community leadership. It introduces clearly defined roles—including Contributors, Committers, Project Leads, Core Project Leads, a Steering Committee, and a Vulnerability Group—to help ensure transparent collaboration while maintaining MySQL’s standards for quality, stability, compatibility, and security.
In the last quarter, we also published the MySQL Developer Guide, which describes how to effectively contribute and participate in the evolution of MySQL.
To catch up on previous discussions, see highlights from earlier sessions:
- Edition #4 highlights (contributions and feature requests)
- Edition #3 highlights (bugs and contributions)
- Edition #2 highlights (ecosystem and metrics)
- Edition #1 highlights (community roadmap)
Q5. How do you see the MySQL governance structure evolving to give the community a stronger voice while maintaining Oracle’s stewardship?
HV: The MySQL Governance model is a key part of how we are evolving community participation while maintaining Oracle’s long-term stewardship of the project. The model is built on principles of transparent processes, merit-based participation, shared stewardship, and a commitment to quality, stability, compatibility, and security.
Oracle remains the primary steward of MySQL while creating clearer pathways for the community to participate in shaping the project’s future. Community members can contribute through code, testing, documentation, bug reports, design discussions, and reviews. As contributors gain experience and demonstrate sustained engagement, they can take on greater responsibilities through defined governance roles.
The model also introduces a Steering Committee that brings together perspectives from Oracle, users, customers, hyperscalers, and the broader open source ecosystem to help guide long-term priorities, governance evolution, ecosystem growth, and community engagement.
Together with public roadmaps, Early Access releases, GitHub collaboration, contributor summits, and design meetings, the governance model creates a structured framework for community participation while preserving the engineering excellence and operational stability that organizations around the world depend on.
Q6. PostgreSQL has been gaining ground with features like pgvector for AI workloads, while MySQL faced criticism for lack of similar capabilities. How does Oracle plan to ensure MySQL remains competitive not just with PostgreSQL, but also with cloud-native databases and newer entrants in the database market?
JW: MySQL offers a uniquely predictable and stable operational model at global scale, combined with strong performance and ease of use. Backed by Oracle, it delivers enterprise-grade reliability while maintaining the flexibility and innovation of open source. We will continue to collaborate with the community to deliver innovations based on our published roadmap into MySQL Community Edition.
Q7. The move of MySQL into Oracle’s cloud organization raised concerns about resource allocation. Can you address these concerns and explain how Oracle is ensuring MySQL has the engineering resources it needs to execute on this new community-focused vision?
JW: MySQL’s success has always come from the combination of strong stewardship and a vibrant community. Oracle continues to invest deeply in both. What’s new is increased transparency, stronger engagement with the community, and more structured ways for contributors, partners, customers, and ecosystem participants to help shape MySQL’s future through the MySQL Governance model and related community programs.
These investments complement our continued engineering investment in MySQL Community Edition, MySQL Enterprise Edition, and MySQL HeatWave.
Q8. You’ve mentioned expanding collaboration with Linux distributions, particularly Canonical and Ubuntu, as well as supporting major open source projects like WordPress and Drupal. What does this ecosystem support look like in practice, and how will Oracle work with companies that some might consider competitors in the MySQL space?
HV: We have built relationships and communication between the MySQL Community Team and open source maintainers to ensure the pathways are smooth for projects to build their projects and platforms using MySQL. We continue to strengthen communications and remove barriers to collaboration.
That spirit of collaboration is reflected in the MySQL Governance model and community engagement efforts. The recent Contributor Summit brought together Oracle engineers and contributors from organizations including Amazon, Google, Percona, ProxySQL, Readyset, VillageSQL, and participants from across the broader MySQL ecosystem, including MariaDB, to share ideas and help shape the future of MySQL.
We continue to focus on growing and expanding the MySQL ecosystem, referencing the analogy of a rising tide lifting all boats. Growing the community and bringing more collaboration and alignment makes us all stronger together and creates opportunities throughout the ecosystem.
Q9. For organizations currently running MySQL in production, what’s your message about long-term support and the roadmap? With MySQL 8.0 approaching end of life and MySQL 9.7 LTS published in April 2026, how should enterprises plan their migration strategies and what assurances can you provide about stability and backward compatibility?
JW: MySQL offers a uniquely predictable and stable operational model at global scale, combined with strong performance and ease of use. Backed by Oracle, it delivers enterprise-grade reliability while maintaining the flexibility and innovation of open source.
The release introduces a new long-term support version of MySQL Community Edition, and MySQL Enterprise Edition, along with expanded feature delivery into the core, early access capabilities, and the first phase of our enhanced transparency and community engagement model.
Q10. Looking beyond the immediate announcements, what is Oracle’s five-year vision for MySQL? How do you see MySQL evolving to meet the demands of AI workloads, cloud-native architectures, and modern developer expectations while preserving the simplicity and reliability that made it the world’s most popular open source database?
JW: MySQL powers everything from startups to hyperscale platforms. It’s used by companies like Uber and Booking, and underpins major platforms like WordPress and Ubuntu. That breadth of adoption is a strong validation of its reliability and scalability.
The vision is simple: build MySQL in the open with the community, accelerate innovation without sacrificing quality or stability, and continue to scale and grow the ecosystem around the world’s most widely used open source database platform.
A key part of that vision is establishing a sustainable governance framework that enables broader participation, develops future community leaders, and creates stronger connections between Oracle, contributors, customers, partners, hyperscalers, and the broader open source ecosystem.
Through transparent roadmaps, community-driven collaboration, contributor programs, and the MySQL Governance model, we aim to create an environment where innovation can accelerate while preserving the reliability, compatibility, security, and operational excellence that organizations around the world depend on.
Jason Wilcox
Senior Vice President, Data and AI Platform, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI)
Jason Wilcox leads the Data and AI Platform organization at Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), overseeing the design and development of OCI’s data platforms, AI infrastructure and platform services, and open source technologies. His portfolio spans cloud-scale data services, data processing and integration platforms, operational services for AI workloads, and widely adopted open source technologies that developers and enterprises rely on to build modern applications. These services help customers manage and use data, run AI workloads, and operate secure, reliable, and scalable systems on OCI.
Heather Vancura
Vice President, External Standards & Community Engagement, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) Heather VanCura is Vice President of External Standards & Community Engagement at Oracle, where she leads Java Community programs and the MySQL Community Outreach team. With over 20 years of experience at Oracle and Sun Microsystems, she is a central figure in the global ecosystem, focusing on community growth, engagement, and standardization efforts.
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