Building MySQL Together with the Open Source Community
MySQL has always been shaped by a broad ecosystem of users, developers, DBAs, contributors, partners, and open source communities around the world.
As MySQL continues to evolve, the MySQL Community is entering a new phase: one focused on innovation, while also providing transparency, and deeper participation and collaboration.
Transparency remains important, but participation and contribution is what turns feedback into action.
That is why Oracle and the MySQL Community are working on new ways to make it easier for developers, users, and contributors to share ideas, discuss technical proposals, follow the roadmap, and help shape the future direction of MySQL.
A New Era of MySQL Community Engagement
MySQL’s 30-year milestone has become more than a celebration. It has also been an opportunity to define a renewed approach to community collaboration, innovation, and participation.
As described in the February New Era of MySQL Community Engagement blog, Oracle is focusing this next phase on three connected areas: bringing more developer-focused innovation into MySQL Community Edition, strengthening the surrounding ecosystem of tools, frameworks, and connectors, and increasing transparency and collaboration so more community voices can help guide and contribute to MySQL’s evolution.
This approach is designed to make participation more practical. Community members should be able to understand the roadmap, see where discussions are happening, provide feedback earlier, and engage through public discussions, GitHub, Early Access testing, and more user group, and contributor-focused events.
The goal is not only to share more information, but to create clearer ways for users and contributors to help shape the future of MySQL through ideas, testing, documentation, feature proposals, and code contributions.
Governance and Community Participation
The MySQL Community engagement plan also includes a more visible governance model. It defines clearer roles and paths for contributors, committers, project leads, aTechnical Steering Committee, and Vulnerability Group for security related work, while preserving the quality, security, compatibility, and stability that MySQL users expect.
For the community, this means a more structured way to participate: participate in roadmap discussions, raise feature requests, join design conversations, test Early Access builds, provide production feedback, and contribute documentation or code.
Governance is about making collaboration easier to understand so feedback can move from discussion toward practical next steps.
From Public Discussions to Contributor Summits
The MySQL Public Discussion series over the last few monts has created a regular space for the community to learn about ongoing MySQL Community initiatives, ask questions, and share feedback.
In May 2026, the first MySQL Contributor Summit brought together Oracle engineers, customers, partners, and members of the open source community for a full day of technical collaboration focused on the future of MySQL.
The Summit included discussions around the MySQL Community Roadmap, including the four areas of focus: AI/cloud integration, performance/observability, DBA/developer experience, and extensibility. More importantly, it created a forum where contributors could bring forward ideas, discuss challenges, and help shape the next steps for MySQL together.
The next MySQL Contributor Summit will take place in Broomfield, Colorado, on August 5–6**, 2026. The focus will be on continuing the discussion from the first Summit, reviewing technical proposals, discussing design ideas, and identifying practical next steps for community-driven collaboration.
GitHub as a Collaboration Hub
A major part of the MySQL Community engagement model includes expanded use of GitHub.
GitHub connects this engagement model with everyday collaboration: feature requests, technical discussions, roadmap visibility and feedback, wiki updates, and follow-up actions can all happen in a place that is visible to the broader community.
The MySQL Community GitHub space is the place for community participation, including:
• GitHub Discussions for open technical conversations
• GitHub Issues for feature requests and proposals
• the MySQL Community Roadmap
• the MySQL Community Wiki
• guidance for contributors and community participants
This gives the community a clearer path to share feedback, propose ideas, follow roadmap-related discussions, and participate in technical conversations.
MySQL Community Roadmap: connecting feedback, discussions, and future priorities.
Whether someone wants to submit a feature request, comment on a proposal, provide feedback from production experience, help with testing, or follow upcoming MySQL Community development, GitHub is the central place to collaborate.
Regional Community Outreach: Taiwan and COSCUP
Community engagement is not only happening online.
In-person conversations remain an important part of building trust, understanding regional needs, and connecting the global MySQL Community with local users and contributors.
This summer, MySQL Community engagement continued across Asia through a series of regional conversations with local communities. Heather VanCura, Vice President of External Standards and Community Engagement at Oracle, met with MySQL users, developers, community leaders, customers, universities, media, and open source ecosystem participants in Japan, Korea, and Taiwan.
In Japan, the MySQL User Group Japan / MyNA community hosted a meetup focused on MySQL Community engagement, Contributor Summit feedback, and perspectives from the local community. The visit also included a joint community roundtable with AWS in Tokyo, media conversations, and a visit to a local science and technology institute hosted by Hokkaido Java User Group leader and Professor Hiroto Yamakawa.
In Korea, Heather met with the MySQL community, customers, and media to discuss the next phase of MySQL Community participation, including open governance, GitHub-based collaboration, the Community Roadmap, and MySQL 9.7 LTS.
In Taiwan, the July 10 joint user group event was originally planned as an in-person meetup, but due to the typhoon, it was moved online. Even with the change in format, the discussion continued and provided another opportunity to connect with the Taiwan MySQL community around MySQL updates, community collaboration, and future participation.
MySQL Community conversations across Japan, Korea, and Taiwan.
The conversation will continue in Taipei on August 7, 2026, one day before COSCUP, with a MySQL Community Meetup with Ryusuke Kajiyama as a speaker. The meetup will include updates from MySQL 26.7, including improvements across InnoDB, replication, Group Replication, OpenSSL 3.5 post-quantum cryptography support, upgrade and compatibility check progress reporting, and the Thread Pool Plugin in MySQL Community Server.
The meetup will also include a discussion about the latest MySQL Community direction, governance, GitHub collaboration, roadmap transparency, and how users and contributors can share ideas, join technical discussions, and help shape the future of MySQL.
COSCUP is a strong open source community event, and it is a great opportunity to continue this conversation with developers, contributors, students, open source communities, and technology users in Taiwan.
Participation Can Take Many Forms
Contributing to MySQL includes more than contributing code.
Community participation can include many different activities, such as:
• testing Early Access releases
• sharing feedback on features and roadmap priorities
• reporting bugs and reproducible issues
• proposing improvements
• joining GitHub Discussions
• reviewing design proposals
• contributing documentation or examples
• sharing production experience
• organizing or speaking at local meetups
• helping new users and contributors get involved
Every form of participation helps improve the quality, usability, and direction of MySQL.
What Comes Next
The future of MySQL Community engagement will continue to focus on practical collaboration, clearer governance, and more regional opportunities to connect with users and contributors.
Public discussions, GitHub Discussions, feature requests, design proposals, Early Access builds, Contributor Summits, user groups, and regional outreach activities are all part of the same direction: making it easier for the community to participate earlier and more meaningfully.
Oracle and the MySQL Community are building the future of MySQL together.
We invite developers, DBAs, users, contributors, students, community organizers, and open source enthusiasts to join the conversation, share feedback, and help shape what comes next.
Join the Conversation
Explore the MySQL Community GitHub repository, follow the MySQL Community Roadmap, join discussions, and look for MySQL Community activities near you.
If you are attending COSCUP or based in Taiwan, we hope to meet you in Taipei and continue the conversation in person.
Building MySQL together starts with participation.
留言