Fedora 19 Nixing MySQL in Favor of MariaDB

An anonymous reader writes "Red Hat developers are planning to replace MySQL with MariaDB in Fedora 19. For the next Fedora update, the MariaDB fork would replace MySQL and the official MySQL package would be discontinued after some time. The reasoning for this move is the uncertainty about Oracle's support of MySQL as an open-source project and moves to make the database more closed." Update: 01/22 13:47 GMT by T : Note: "Nixing" may be a bit strong; this move has been proposed, but is not yet officially decided.

See this comparison. Wikipedia is moving, too.

[phaunt]

Here is a comparison of MariaDB vs MySQL [askmonty.org].
Probably most important to Fedora is this:

Truly Open Source

• All code in MariaDB is released under GPL, LPGL or BSD. MariaDB does not have closed source modules like the one you can find in MySQL enterprise edition. In fact, all the closed source features in MySQL 5.5 enterprise edition are found in the MariaDB open source version.
• MariaDB includes test cases for all fixed bugs. Oracle doesn't provide test cases for new bugs fixed in MySQL 5.5.
• All bugs and development plans are public.
• MariaDB is developed by the community in true open source spirit.

Wikipedia, too, is moving from MySQL to MariaDB [zdnet.com].

Migrating

[mwvdlee]

How easy is it to migrate from MySQL to MariaDB?
Is it truely drop-in replacement as in "you can develop to MySQL, then run MariaDB in production without worrying"?
Does it require converting current tables? Will it take a 10GB database all day to convert or will MariaDB just use the raw MySQL data files automagically?