Thank you! A member of the build team got back to me and said their new installs all come with maria, although they're going to be offering mySQL again in the future. Interesting.
Since I might have to live with mariaDB, the next thing to determine is if it is safe to stick with the version they installed (10.0.37) or if I need to upgrade now. We typically build a new server every 2 years.
The 5 year boundary date for 10.0 is 31 Mar 2019, so there may be no more support in just 2 months.
My other options are 10.1 and 10.2.
Does anyone have any thoughts on upgrading to 10.1 or 10.2? I have some old applications and I need to maintain compatibility.
My only concern with 10.2 is this: MariaDB enables "strict mode" by default as of version 10.2.
I don't know enough to know if this might be a concern. My layman's thoughts are that I need to go to 10.1 where the 5 year boundary is 17 Oct 2020.
Appreciate your feedback
