These days, most smaller users go with a managed DBaaS such as AWS RDS, and on RDS MySQL gets massively more usage than MariaDB.
I build schema management software for MySQL and MariaDB, https://www.skeema.io, used by several hundred companies. Among my userbase, MariaDB is a tiny minority, to such an extent that I wonder if it's worthwhile to continue keeping up with their new quarterly release schedule.
WordPress is very widely used, but it is not "60% of the internet" (or even 60% of the web) based on any statistics I see anywhere. Some sites say it's 60% of all CMS's; perhaps you may be transposing these stats?
Anyway, among WP usage, I would confidently wager that the percentage running in "cheap VPS" setups is declining fast each year. Many different reasons for this. The heyday of smalltime independent bloggers (on WP or otherwise) was a decade ago. Large SaaS hosts (including the official wordpress.com) make up a big chunk of WP hosting. Security is a huge issue with self-hosted WP. Companies using WP as a CMS aren't going to use a tiny VPS.
There are still a lot of WordPress instances on cheap VPS setups, don't get me wrong. I just don't believe it's still such a major force where it would make up a majority of new mysql/mariadb installations anymore.
To clarify, my comment was based on anecdotal discussions and interactions with users, issue reports, feature requests, user enthusiasm for new MySQL support/functionality vs relative lack of enthusiasm for new MariaDB support/functionality, etc.
The Skeema CLI is able to accurately identify your database version and flavor (which is necessary for its functionality), there is no notion of MariaDB registering itself as MySQL. But the CLI does not contain telemetry, so I don't have hard stats on MySQL vs MariaDB usage.
> These days, most smaller users go with a managed DBaaS such as AWS RDS
I think there's likely a long tail of small (non-tech) businesses that run WordPress (or Drupal/Joomla) on a traditional shared web host (the kind that only offers PHP and MySQL/MariaDB).
> Simply track your desired schema state in a repo of CREATE statements, and the tool figures out how to apply any changes to your tables and routines.
Wow, this sounds extremely useful, great job! Does anyone know anything like this for Postgres?
Thanks! I know of a couple Postgres tools that work in a declarative fashion: migra [1] and sqldef [2].
Migra is Postgres-specific. Its model is similar to Skeema's, in that the desired-state CREATEs are run in a temporary location and then introspected, to build an in-memory understanding of the desired state which can be diff'ed against the current actual state. (This approach has also been borrowed by other recent tools, including Prisma Migrate [3]). In this manner, the tool doesn't need a SQL parser, instead relying on the real DBMS to guarantee the CREATE is interpreted correctly with your exact DBMS version/flavor/settings.
In contrast, sqldef supports multiple databases, including Postgres and MySQL (among others). Unlike other tools, it uses a SQL parser-based approach to build its in-memory understanding of the desired state. As a DB professional, personally this approach scares me a bit, given the amount of nonstandard stuff in each DBMS's SQL dialect. But I'm inherently biased on this topic. And I will note sqldef's author is a core Ruby committer and JIT author, and is extremely skilled at parsers.
I build schema management software for MySQL and MariaDB, https://www.skeema.io, used by several hundred companies. Among my userbase, MariaDB is a tiny minority, to such an extent that I wonder if it's worthwhile to continue keeping up with their new quarterly release schedule.