> But how is that different from the old MS battle-cry "embrace, extend, extinguish"?
It's OSS. That alone makes it different. Anybody can continue work on it or even fork it.
Postgres is an awesome database and an awesome project. I think the core developers have a good blend of being committed to supporting the SQL standard and adding new non-standard features. If you read through the docs they usually specify if a given feature is standard SQL or a Postgres extenstion. If you want to use something new that isn't standardized yet you have that option. If you don't, you have the info that it's not. The choice is yours.
> It's the "extinguish" part I'm concerned about.
I'm not sure I understand this. Are you worried about Postgres extinguishing its competitor databases (MySQL, Oracle, SQL Server, ... etc)? I'll be honest that I do see that happening but it's not malicious. It's just a better product. For transactional/persistent storage of data I don't see myself recommending anything else.
It's OSS. That alone makes it different. Anybody can continue work on it or even fork it.
Postgres is an awesome database and an awesome project. I think the core developers have a good blend of being committed to supporting the SQL standard and adding new non-standard features. If you read through the docs they usually specify if a given feature is standard SQL or a Postgres extenstion. If you want to use something new that isn't standardized yet you have that option. If you don't, you have the info that it's not. The choice is yours.
> It's the "extinguish" part I'm concerned about.
I'm not sure I understand this. Are you worried about Postgres extinguishing its competitor databases (MySQL, Oracle, SQL Server, ... etc)? I'll be honest that I do see that happening but it's not malicious. It's just a better product. For transactional/persistent storage of data I don't see myself recommending anything else.