For the record, what was suggested in the email linked above has already been done in 10.3 at least:
mariadb-10.3/debian$ grep Package control
Package: libmariadb-dev
Package: libmariadb-dev-compat
Package: libmariadb3
Package: libmariadb3-compat
Package: libmariadbclient18
Package: libmysqlclient18
Package: libmariadbd-dev
Package: libmariadbd19
Package: mysql-common
Package: mariadb-common
Package: mariadb-client-core-10.3
Package: mariadb-client-10.3
Package: mariadb-server-core-10.3
Package: mariadb-server-10.3
Package: mariadb-server
Package: mariadb-client
Package: mariadb-plugin-connect
Package: mariadb-plugin-rocksdb
Package: mariadb-plugin-oqgraph
Package: mariadb-plugin-tokudb
Package: mariadb-plugin-mroonga
Package: mariadb-plugin-spider
Package: mariadb-plugin-gssapi-server
Package: mariadb-plugin-gssapi-client
Package: mariadb-backup
Package: mariadb-plugin-cracklib-password-check
Package: mariadb-test
Package: mariadb-test-data
Only server and client remain versioned so that sysadmins can choose if they want to stay on a particular version or depend on the versionless package name and always have their systems upgrade to latest MariaDB.
For the record, what was suggested in the email linked above has already been done in 10.3 at least:
mariadb-10.3/debian$ grep Package control
Package: libmariadb-dev
Package: libmariadb-dev-compat
Package: libmariadb3
Package: libmariadb3-compat
Package: libmariadbclient18
Package: libmysqlclient18
Package: libmariadbd-dev
Package: libmariadbd19
Package: mysql-common
Package: mariadb-common
Package: mariadb-client-core-10.3
Package: mariadb-client-10.3
Package: mariadb-server-core-10.3
Package: mariadb-server-10.3
Package: mariadb-server
Package: mariadb-client
Package: mariadb-plugin-connect
Package: mariadb-plugin-rocksdb
Package: mariadb-plugin-oqgraph
Package: mariadb-plugin-tokudb
Package: mariadb-plugin-mroonga
Package: mariadb-plugin-spider
Package: mariadb-plugin-gssapi-server
Package: mariadb-plugin-gssapi-client
Package: mariadb-backup
Package: mariadb-plugin-cracklib-password-check
Package: mariadb-test
Package: mariadb-test-data
Only server and client remain versioned so that sysadmins can choose if they want to stay on a particular version or depend on the versionless package name and always have their systems upgrade to latest MariaDB.