Do you need separate systems when you already have Postgres?

Posted by b-man 5 hours ago

Do you need separate systems when you already have Postgres?(postgresisenough.dev)

100 points | 75 commentspage 3

bijowo1676 3 hours ago|

lets take it one step further: Do you really need Postgres when you already have SQLite?

whstl 3 hours ago|

For 90%, maybe 99% of projects: not really.

Postgres is a good middle ground, though.

PaulHoule 5 hours ago||

... and unlike all the new databases, Postgres has a decent license. Everybody else is so afraid of being co-opted by AWS that they won't let you run them the way the way you want.

sarchertech 4 hours ago|

Is there something specific you wanted to do that was prohibited by a license. I thought most of the licenses you’re talking about just prohibited you from reselling the database as a service.

PaulHoule 3 hours ago|||

A client introduced me to Arangodb which I felt was a "secret weapon" that I used for a lot of side projects. Then this came out

https://arango.ai/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/ADB-Community-L...

and it is dead to me. I want my head! I can accept GPL, Apache, MIT or some legit open source license. For my projects I see two possible paths which I want to have open: (1) building a commercial service on top of a database (like my RSS reader) where you can't necessarily draw a clear line between what is allowed and what is not allowed, for instance I have an adaptation layer that makes postgres look like the part of arangodb that I actually use (I do manually rewrite AQL queries into a DSL that extends AlchemyAPI) and if I did something similar over arango is this reselling? (2) an open source project where I want to tell people "go forth and use this code" and not have to hire a lawyer to know what they can and can't do.

Once a vendor has shown they have this attitude, I expect them to change their license for the worse in the future -- I just don't want to invest my time and energy in their platform.

sarchertech 1 hour ago|||

The license you linked was too much for me because it included limitations 100 GB of data and providing audit logs for the company to inspect.

But I don’t have a problem with people inserting clauses to prevent Amazon from taking over. I don’t expect free work from people forever. If I’m going to use an open source project to build a commercial product, I would only do so if I’m ok forking and maintaining the project myself if necessary.

PaulHoule 49 minutes ago||

The license wasn't like that when I first got involved or I wouldn't have gotten involved.

I don't have any fear that Postgres will get relicensed with a worse license than it has. But I see any relicensing or license that is more restrictive than a standard license as a slippery slope that makes me think "I don't want to invest in this platform" thanks to that experience.

I'm a software developer, not a lawyer. I understand standard software licenses and don't feel I have to re-read them or think too much about them. By using one and being dependent on systems that use them I feel like I'm reducing the burden on people who might adopt my open source.

tudorg 1 hour ago|||

This is why I think sites like this one should show license information and make it simple to filter by OSS license.

Otherwise it's the same trap, just one level deeper.

throwaway7356 3 hours ago||||

Yes, that condition makes it no longer open source software.

It also has the effect of making software adopting such licenses getting removed from open source distributions.

sarchertech 3 hours ago||

If someone takes the MIT license and adds unless your last name ends in ezos then yes it no longer meats the definition of Open Source published by the OSI. But there’s nothing holy about that definition or being “open source”. OSI is just a group funded by companies like Amazon, Microsoft, and Google.

And if they aren’t calling themselves Open Source, then why do you care?

ubercore 3 hours ago|||

It's also postgres, but timescaledb's licensing (and therefore its lack of good support in azure managed postgres) is a bummer.

DarkCrusader2 3 hours ago||

Given the unanimous consensus on HN that Postgres is all you will ever need. I will present 2 resources which I came across recently which changed my perspective on this blind reverence for Postgres for everything.

First is this Oxide and Friends episode [1] where Bryan and gang explains war stories related to operating Postgres during their Joyent days and why they went with Cockroach DB for Oxide.

Second is this amazing blog from brandur which explains several issues with using Postgres as high throughput queue and some mitigations.

Online forums like Hacker news can be a bit echo chamber-y. It is always good to ensure that the people you are taking advice from are solving the same problem as you.

[1] https://oxide-and-friends.transistor.fm/episodes/whither-coc... [2] https://brandur.org/postgres-queues

chestervonwinch 4 hours ago||

what about for blob storage too?

alphainfo 2 hours ago||

[flagged]

otabdeveloper4 4 hours ago|

Postgres sucks. It does a little bit of everything, but badly and with much manual intervention.

nilamo 3 hours ago||

Wild statement, imo. There is no better open source database, so I'm very curious what you prefer and what your use cases are...

PaulHoule 3 hours ago||

It's boring but the last thing you want is excitement over data that's important to your business!

All the eng. managers I've worked with in the last decade have sworn by Postgres, in the decade before that they were swearing at mongo and getting betrayed by Arangodb switching to a restrictive license and seeing other innovative databases going down the same path means for new side projects I go postgres.

dimgl 3 hours ago||

I've come to this conclusion too. It's a bit disappointing. I fully realize this is more than likely just user error. And now with AI agents the maintenance of a Postgres instance is likely less of a burden. But I can't help but yearn for the simplicity of a single SQLite file and bespoke solutions for things like queues, pub/sub, caching, etc.