Having spent more than the last decade being the main point of contact for distributions shipping MySQL, then MariaDB Server, it's clear that working with distributions have many challenges. Licensing changes (when MySQL moved the client libraries from LGPL to GPL with a FOSS Exception), ABI changes, speed (or lack thereof) of distribution releases/freezes, supporting the software throughout the lifespan of the distribution, specific bugs due to platforms, and a lot more will be discussed in this talk. Let's not forget the politics. How do we decide "tiers" of importance for distributions? As a bonus, there will be a focus on how much effort it took to "replace" MySQL with MariaDB.
Having spent more than the last decade being the main point of contact for distributions shipping MySQL, then MariaDB Server, it's clear that working with distributions have many challenges. Licensing changes (when MySQL moved the client libraries from LGPL to GPL with a FOSS Exception), ABI changes, speed (or lack thereof) of distribution releases/freezes, supporting the software throughout the lifespan of the distribution, specific bugs due to platforms, and a lot more will be discussed in this talk. Let's not forget the politics. How do we decide "tiers" of importance for distributions? As a bonus, there will be a focus on how much effort it took to "replace" MySQL with MariaDB.
Benefits: if you're making a distribution, this is the point of view of the upstream package makers. Why are distribution statistics important to us? Do we monitor your bugs system or do you have a better escalation to us? How do we test to make sure things are going well before release. This and more will be spoken about.
As an upstream project (package), we love nothing more than being available everywhere. But time and energy goes into making this is so as there are quirks in every distribution.