The promise of open source has always been simple: strategic freedom. But today, that promise is under siege. Many foundational open source technologies, like MySQL, are falling into a single vendor trap, trying to survive in the shadows of corporate ownership where roadmaps can be stifled and deployment options limited.
Nowhere is this more evident than in the diverging paths of the world’s two most popular open-source databases: MySQL and PostgreSQL.
The Decline of Vendor- Led Innovation
When a single corporation controls an open-source offering, innovation often becomes a byproduct of corporate priority rather than community need. The data supports this claim because between 2006 and 2025, MySQL commits plummeted from a peak of 26,748 to just 4,725. The decline in commits could lead to the potential loss of support and stifle future development for MySQL by Oracle. This isn't just a technical hurdle, it’s a potential business risk because when organizations cannot rely on the long-term stability and unbiased support of their database engine, they should not trust it with their data and mission critical business functions.
The Rise of PostgreSQL
In contrast, according to the 2025 Stack Overflow Developer Survey, PostgreSQL has reached a record-breaking 55.6% adoption rate among the global developer community. This represents a significant 7 percentage point increase from its 48.7% share in 2024, marking the largest single-year growth in the database's history. For three consecutive years, PostgreSQL has held the title of the #1 most popular, most loved, and most wanted database. This surge has disrupted the long-standing hierarchy of database technologies, with MySQL falling to 4th place in 2025.
This growth can be tied to PostgreSQL being governed by an independent, community-led core team under a permissive license. This ensures your data foundation is built on universal, vendor-neutral standards that allows you to distribute workloads without being forced into a single ecosystem's cost structure.
Six Principles for Open Source Excellence
To thrive in this new landscape, enterprise leaders must evaluate their data foundation against six non-negotiable principles:
1. Deployment Flexibility: The ability to run critical workloads across multi-cloud and hybrid environments without vendor lock-in.
2. Performance & Global Availability: Ensuring predictable performance during traffic spikes and maintaining up to 99.999% availability for applications that can never go down.
3. Trust and Security: Protecting data integrity via rigorous ACID compliance and enhanced security policies to meet mandates like GDPR and SOC 2.
4. Extensibility: Consolidating workflows, relational, document, time-series, and vector, into a single data store to eliminate data fragmentation, while reducing infrastructure complexity and technical debt.
5. AI Readiness: Leverage vector capabilities natively inside the database, thus AI data lives alongside mission-critical data, speeding up query response speeds and innovation cycles.
6. Support Flexibility: Avoid single-source and unplanned pricing hikes by choosing a technology supported by a wide, competitive ecosystem.
Achieve Data Freedom!
At EDB, we believe the future belongs to sovereign data. This means unifying transactional, analytical, and AI workloads while providing you absolute control over your landscape. By leveraging EDB Postgres AI, organizations aren’t just choosing an alternative to MySQL; they are selecting the premier partner for the transition from MySQL to Postgres, gaining a platform that is 3x faster for GenAI application delivery and up to 4x faster in performance than MySQL.
Beyond its technical edge, EDB is an industry leader in Oracle migration expertise. Our specialized tools and deep architectural knowledge provide an expedited, risk free, seamless path for enterprises looking to escape legacy lock-in and modernize their entire database estate with confidence.
The choice is no longer just about features; it’s about freedom and independence and EDB is your best partner to sovereignty. Don't let your data strategy be dictated by a vendor’s bottom line and narrow roadmap enhancements. Future-proof your organization by choosing PostgreSQL and EDB, and build a foundation for the next decade of innovation. To learn more, read the brief or visit our website.