1. To me, providing bintars is not important. Nor is providing any binaries for that matter. MariaDB is open source, the most important thing is it is easy to compile. Others can provide binaries as needed, and in fact distros are already doing so very well. So I personally am fine with not releasing bintars going forward. I know binaries are considered important by others.
+1 to focus on source code over binaries I also share the general view with Kristian that as most advanced users can build MariaDB themselves as long as the default CMake settings etc are sensible. If during the whole development cycle a CI was in place and consistently green, proving that no code changes broke the build with on any of the most popular new and old LInux distros, or at that if such breakage was unavoidable, the CMakeLists.txt files handle it properly, are explicit about the dependencies, have clear error messages etc basic code base health, then advanced users will be able to successfully use MariaDB in places they want to use it. Less advanced users are likely better served by Linux distros or vendors giving them the binaries and more.