I’ve not worked with databases in … more time than I care to think about, so this is an interesting look into something I knew nothing about. Perhaps less so for the rest of y’all.

Today Postgres is one of the most widely used database systems, but its launch and subsequent development were inauspicious to say the least.

If it weren’t for a league of exceptionally devoted open source contributors, it probably would be another forgotten also-ran just like Ingres, the database system on which it was based (“Postgres” was shorthand for “Post-Ingres”).

The creator of both systems, Michael Stonebraker, is perhaps the preeminent database pioneer in the field. Earlier this month, he spoke at PGDay, a conference in Boston hosted by the U.S. PostgreSQL Association, where he detailed the complicated history of the open source database system, which actually existed long before the term “open source” was even uttered.

In a sense, “Postgres is the epitome of open source software, because it doesn’t belong to anybody. It was picked up by this team of programmers without any specific affiliation,” Stonebraker said.

Stonebraker essentially abandoned Postgres in the mid-1990s. But instead of fading into obscurity, the codebase was salvaged by a fiercely-dedicated volunteer community that bolted on standard SQL while preserving Stonebraker’s revolutionary extensible architecture.