MariaDB, or how MySQL didn't die with the Sun/Oracle take-overs

So...
a) MySQL AB sold itself to Sun Microsystems
b) Sun Microsystems was acquired by Oracle Corporation.
And so now Oracle "owns" MySQL. What an odd situation.

Being techies we don't care much for politics, we just want to know what happens with the code and who is taking care of active development.
Arjen shows what's going on in Monty's MariaDB branch of MySQL, the original developers that once again work hard fixing bugs and other nasties like slow subqueries that had been waiting for many years. It's all happening again, both at the core and with active community involvement and major contributions.

If you use MySQL, you want to know about this stuff, just on the technical level. MariaDB is a drop-in replacement for stock MySQL, and has already been added to the OpenSUSE distro.