[general_failure]

I scrolled to a random page. It was totally absurd, stopped right there.

"Crucially, because open-source software tends to be written by people who care deeply about its quality (often because they have a direct personal stake in ensuring that the software works as well as possible), it is often of the very highest standard (PostgreSQL, Linux, MySQL, XBMC, Hadoop, Android, VLC, Neo4JS, Redis, 7Zip, FreeBSD, golang, PHP, Python, R, Nginx, Apache, node.js, Chrome, Firefox...). On the other hand, commercial software is often designed by committee, written in cube farms and developed without proper guidance or inspiration (Microsoft BOB, RealPlayer, Internet Explorer 6, iOS Maps, Lotus Notes, Windows ME, Windows Vista, QuickTime, SharePoint..."

[keithwarren]

I know numerous guys on the SQL Server team and it actually causes me a bit of anger when I read a clueless statement like that, for the author I feel sorry for his ignorance; the anger comes from the fact that lots of clueless people will actually read this and believe it to be authoritarian because of the verbosity of it alone.

[rbanffy]

The SQL Server group (and their product) is one of the very few things in Microsoft that has earned my deepest respect. Not Windows, not Exchange and, certainly, not ShamePoint.

I frequently rank Microsoft's product line as follows:

1 - Natural keyboard - the one there is no reasonable replacement for (the kinesis keyboards are 5 times as expensive). If there is a reason my none of my machines is 100% Microsoft free, this is it.

2 - their mice - simple, precise, comfortable, inexpensive

3 - SQL Server - it almost makes having a Windows server around worth the pain.

Having said that, I have enormous respect for PostgreSQL. It's a very solid RDBMS and it's my database of choice most of the time. It is more comfortable to use from a command line than SQL Server will ever be (which is OK, because a CLI is not a high priority over there).

[Implicated]

I just can't replace the keyboard.

[Pherdnut]

I wouldn't let it anger you. I care about quality but every for-profit-company development team I've been on, I was forced to hold my nose at some point/many points/constantly due to some feature demand(s) that had nothing to do with providing a higher quality product and everything to do with either a customer and/or a manager that was a complete and total moron.

[bergeoisie]

Weird that OpenSSL isn't on the list of OSS projects.

[tedunangst]

Weird that Google Maps isn't on the list of commercial projects next to iOS Maps...

[rzimmerman]

I hit the one about how MS SQL Server doesn't run on Linux and had a similar reaction.

[mirsadm]

As someone that uses PostgreSQL, would you care to elaborate on the topic? I haven't used MS SQL Server so maybe if you can actually provide some useful information we can start a discussion and learn something new.

[WorldWideWayne]

I think many IT departments choose MSSQL for the same reason they choose Windows - it's an easy to setup system with good tools and lots of commercial support. MSSQL also integrates very tightly with Windows and you can use single-sign-on via Windows authentication with no setup.

The administration GUI included with SQL Server (called SQL Server Management Studio/SSMS) is very robust and whenever I look, I always see other people asking around for something as good as SSMS for other RDBMS. If you use Unix you might prefer your command line tools, but a lot folks would rather obviously use a GUI.

For developers, I haven't found anything better than SQL Server Data Tools (SSDT) which is a set of extensions for Visual Studio that let you design and develop a SQL Server database. It creates version migration scripts, diffs database schemas and data, integrates with git and other source control providers and generates DML scripts among other things.