Facebook, Google, Twitter and LinkedIn announced a new collaboration among their engineer teams called WebScaleSQL.

A spokesperson for Facebook tells us that the companies are “working to share a common set of changes to the upstream MySQL branch that will be available via open source,” and “will include contributions from MySQL engineering teams at all four companies.”

WebScaleSQL will expand on existing efforts by the MySQL community, and we will continue to track the upstream branch that is the latest, production-ready release (currently MySQL 5.6), Facebook says.

So far, the engineers have set up a system for collaborating, reviewing code, and reporting bugs. One engineer can propose a change, and another from another company will review the code and offer feedback. If an agreement is reached, it will be pushed to the WebScaleSQL branch for everybody else. Each company can then further customize WebScaleSQL for their own needs.

The engineers have already made an automated framework that will run and publish the results of MySQL’s built-in test system, a suite of stress tests and a prototype automated performance testing system. They’ve also made changes to code structure and existing tests as well as performance improvements, and features to make WebScaleSQL scaling easier.

You can read more about the specifics here.

The companies intend to keep their WebScaleSQL work open and to continue to follow the most up-to-date upstream version of MySQL.

“As long as the MySQL community releases continue, we are committed to remaining a branch – and not a fork – of MySQL,” says Facebook software engineer Steaphan Greene.

Those who want to get involved with the project can check out this site.

Image via WebScaleSQL.org