[geophile]

The omission, combined with the context, leads the reader to make an incorrect conclusion.

    ... he returned to Berkeley in 1985, and started a post-
    Ingres database project.

That would be Postgres.

    Naturally, he named that database post-gres — as in, after Ingres.

He says it's Postgres.

    And thus PostgreSQL was born. 

"thus" implies that the preceding discussion, about Postgres, describes the birth of PostgreSQL. Which it doesn't. At best, this is confusing, suggesting that Postgres = PostgreSQL. Postgres became PostgreSQL ten years later, once SQL was added, replacing PostQUEL. The elided details allow for different interpretations, including the wrong one, that SQL was there from the beginning. Also, the tone of the text you quoted suggests that Stonebraker learned his lesson, and just went to SQL for the Postgres project, which he definitely did not do.

[wenc]

I see what you're saying about that implication. I think the effects were indirect; SQL winning meant that Postgres, even though it started out supporting only POSTQUEL, had to evolve to eventually supporting SQL -- though you are correct that the cause-effect was not as direct and as inexorable as might have been implied in the prose.

I personally think eliding details was artistic license to make the prose flow better without bringing in ancillary details, but that's just me.

Stonebraker did eventually change his mind about SQL however -- if you've watched any of his recent talks he's of the opinion that most query languages will eventually and inexorably converge to some variant of SQL. (he was wrong about Mongo inventing a SQL-like query language, but that's what his philosophical commitments look like these days)