[evanelias]

> what kind of RDBMS ships with a flag named "strict sql mode" that's available to be set to something?

How about some of the most widely deployed database software on earth? For example SQLite doesn't even enforce column types by default today, and has only had the option to do so for less than four years!

In MySQL/MariaDB's case, yes they should have changed that default much earlier, but they historically over-indexed on backwards compatibility concerns around that time period.