Here are a few resources for those interested in GIS in MariaDB.

• OGC Simple Feature Access - the Open Geospatial Consortium's OpenGIS Simple Features Specifications For SQL.
• Geo/Spatial Search with MySQL - a presentation by Alexander Rubin, from the MySQL Conference in 2006.

There are currently no differences between GIS in stable versions of MariaDB and GIS in MySQL. There are, however, some extensions and enhancements being worked on. See "MariaDB Plans - GIS" for more information.