MariaDB is by Monty, creator of MySQL who previously sold-then-forked it. So there's no guarantee the same thing won't happen to it (quite the opposite really).

He does no longer own the exclusive rights to the code (they are Oracle's now) and so can only publish under the GPL.

Yes, Drizzle and MariaDB are two MySQL forks that are gaining good momentum. Let hope another OpenOffice -> LibreOffice move can be done again.

An honest question, why support the people who caused this situation in the first place? It really seems like supporting other groups would be more appropriate.

I agree. They shafted us once already.

I also agree. But at least they sold it to Sun, not Oracle.