I don't see how that would be a realistic risk? Any MariaDB user (including Lobste.rs) could request the source, and per the GPL it must be supplied, so this isn't an effective strategy for any entity to go closed-source.
And in any case, https://github.com/MariaDB/ links to mariadb.org which is run by the MariaDB Foundation, not the commercial enterprise owned by K1.
Even with that in mind why switch to sqlite rather than PostgreSQL, which is roughly equivalent to MariaDB?