The guy you replied to said "reduce waste", not "completely eliminate all waste". All the scenarios you describe are much less wasteful than if nothing was open source.

I look at "branches" like that as R&D. We are learning what works with them and then sticking with the best. It is also insurance that we don't get coopted by someone like Oracle.

Another facet is that, despite the waste, a lot of people are strongly motivated by competition to do better. Look at how Mir has spurred Wayland to get its act in gear - or how Gnome tried fixing Gnome 3 when Unity happened, or clang vs gcc, or how Go + Rust / Ruby + Python / Java + C# are competitive in the language space, or how Backbone competes with Angular.

All over the open source space, there are almost always two opposing forces in each camp, sometimes more, but whenever the competition dries up (VLC?) innovation slows down. VLC has become extremely refined as a media player, and I ask nothing more from it, but it hasn't tried any real radical UI departures or UX shifts and its mobile version is still slow on the uptake. I imagine if it had a media player competitor it would improve faster.

So the duplicated effort, although a "waste" of time, seems to drive developers to work harder, which produces better products in the end.

Spending time with FUD and bile arguing against open source projects, now that's a waste of time. Complaining about licenses and inefficiencies is also a waste of time when it's done by people who are not directly involved in development.

Compare that with exploring different paradigms and priorities (such as Postgres and Mysql who happen to have very different philosophies), which is absolutely OK in my book. Nobody wants a monoculture. Except malicious bystanders who first and foremost like to make this into some kind of faction warfare.

I don't really have a stake in this fake database conflict, but why is it that Postgres always seems to attract these kinds of people whereas Mysql users seem to be content doing their thing mostly in silence and without the vitriole?

PostgreSQL is appealing to professionals who have a solid understanding of relational theory, who have much experience creating, using and maintaining large, heavily-used and high-availability databases, and who can quite easily see the many flaws with lesser database systems. These are the kind of people who, knowing that better exists, will indeed speak out loudly against that which is inferior.

You portray it as some sort of a "conflict" between open source projects, but that couldn't be any more distant from the truth. It's all about doing things properly. Some database systems do this, and there are some that don't. We should acknowledge this fact.

It surely is not a waste of time or effort to educate people about the reality of the situation, especially those who may ignorantly be using a certain inferior product without even realizing that there are better alternative out there.

You think flaming against software you don't happen to like is the hallmark of a professional? For what it's worth, I don't portray a "conflict", I allege in no uncertain terms that it is people like you who try to instigate it. You speak in absolutes as far as your personal preference in software is concerned, making it clear that you think all people who use anything else are unprofessional idiots. I'm not sure you are aware how arrogant and abrasive this sounds.

I'm not writing this to attack you personally, but I want to call attention to a kind of behavior I think is not acceptable, and it sure as hell isn't productive in any setting - least of all a discussion with a diverse group of developers. You should not be able to get away with this so easily. Whether intentionally or not, you are poisoning the discourse.

You get to say all the reasons why you like product X, and all the reasons why you dislike product Y, and then we can have a discussion based on these points. Just asserting X is obviously superior, and Y users are ignorant nincompoops is not OK.

I'm not sure what my personal preference has to do with this discussion.

Regardless of what I may think or believe, the fact is that PostgreSQL is a superb relational database system. Of the open source database systems, it is by far the most capable and robust. Its price and very liberal licensing only make it better. This is indisputable.

I don't see how taking an unemotional look at the facts, especially when purely objective technical analysis is involved, is in any way "poisoning the discourse".

As professionals, we should be able to look at our tools and openly state which are good, and which are bad. Detaching oneself from emotions and personal convictions is one of the hallmarks of professionalism, regardless of the field in question.

> I don't see how taking an unemotional look at the facts

If only it were so! We'd be talking about actual facts, instead you're doing this, posturing. You think because you say you're being objective makes it so? Nothing you said had any content besides an aggressive statement about your preferences badly hidden behind what you assert to be the objective truth. Listen, I tried. I don't know what else to say except repeating myself. I'm also not quite sure if you're not just trolling, so I think we should both spend our energy on something more rewarding.

I am bringing up facts, even if you're choosing to ignore them, or refuse to accept them.

PostgreSQL is a technologically superior database system, relative to the other open source database systems, and even compared to many commercial database systems. It does have extremely liberal licensing. It has a community that is exceptionally knowledgeable and extremely willing to help.

The facts are the facts. And the facts all prove the overall fact that PostgreSQL is the most capable, robust and trustworthy open source database system around, regardless of what we may personally believe.