Which MySQL Fork/Version to Pick?

Question

As most of you know, Sun acquired MySQL (and later Oracle acquired Sun), and during these acquisitions, there were a lot of FUD in MySQL community which resulted in creation of

Answer 1

Google has a memory library patch out that supposedly improves performance on multi-thread / core mysql installations. Supposedly, the performance bottleneck was in the memory allocation routines, and would manifest itself starting at 4 cores. I'm currently running a dual proc box with 4 cores each, and am having no problems with 5.1.x without the memory library patch.

My biggest suggestion to you would be to install 5.4 and run a benchmark suite against it. If it does the job, go with it. The fragmentation of the various forks does suck, but maybe it will be for the best. At least the founders have money now to fund their own direction... I wouldn't take the advice to follow them blindly though... It took a lot of time and efffort to set up the mysql infrastructure initially, and while it wouldn't hurt to support the team that did it the first time, there is no guarantee they will succeed the second time. So... support them, but don't rely on them until you know you can rely on them.