Why MotherDuck refuses to fork DuckDB

MotherDuck said it will keep collaborating with DuckDB Labs and other maintainers rather than fork DuckDB.

AI lead Till Döhmen said the company shares performance insights from running a large DuckDB fleet to help improve the project upstream.

Instead of creating a separate codebase, MotherDuck plans to adapt DuckDB through its extensibility and raise core changes with open-source maintainers when needed.

The approach highlights how an open-source business can drive database improvements while keeping the ecosystem aligned.