MySQL and MariaDB: the real difference

Recently we came into a bug in newest MariaDB version.

After some investigations we found that the bug affects not only older MariaDB versions, but also MySQL from at least 5.5. Evidently the bug appeared in MySQL sources well before forking MariaDB from MySQL.

We reported the bug to MySQL and MariaDB bug trackers.

MySQL developers answered very quickly but their answer was rather discouraging - they said that "is a known behaviour" however "not too well described". And they refused to fix it but added a mention of this "known behaviour" in the documentation.

MariaDB developers on the contrary were keeping silence for a month but then just fixed the issue.

Though the both these databases are open-sourced and licensed under GNU General Public License, this is a very good example of difference between development of big-company owned software and community-developed software. MySQL has a nice support that answers quickly, but instead of fixing a real bug they just refer to "a known behaviour". And MariaDB which is developed by community members in their free time can't afford quick answering, but its developers really fixed this bug.