Can I use MariaDB as a replication slave for MySQL? I've been a MySQL user/administrator for many years and I've been considering a switch to MariaDB. We have a statement-replicated setup with a MySQL slave and I've been thinking that one way to ease-into a MariaDB environment might be to swap the slave out for MariaDB until we're comfortable, then switch the master to MariaDB.

Is that something that is possible? I suspect it is, since the replication interface is fairly simple, especially for a statement-replicated setup.

Is that something that makes any sense?

UPDATE
I happen to be using MySQL 5.5 as the master and MySQL 5.6 as the replicated slave in my current environment, just in case that has any bearing on anything. But I'm curious if different versions might be better or worse for a mixed-vendor setup.
Yes, this is possible, and probably makes sense. See e.g. Replicating from MySQL Master to MariaDB Slave. So with MySQL 5.5 as the master, you can use MariaDB 5.5 or later as the slave.