MySQLdb dependency in mysql module

I’ve been working with the newly released Opensuse Leap 15 which no longer packages python MySQLdb.
Suspicious that this was intentional, I googled a bit and found this on the saltstack Github issues pages:

https://github.com/saltstack/salt/issues/31450

In this thread they indicate that MySQLdb has been abandoned.

I can install the appropriate development tools and build manually, but this is a very heavy weight solution for basic Db management

I can file a ticket with the Suse folks, but I suspect they’ve also decided the project is abandoned.

Any thoughts/suggestions

In the Debian realm python-mysqldb is using this fork of mysqldb
https://pypi.org/project/mysqlclient/

It's live and kicking, last commit only 7 days ago.