I have thought that the commercial nature of the (heh) mother company here, DuckDB labs, is support contracts and the like. Whilst MotherDuck is just another VC funded company in the DuckDB ecosystem. This new extension being added the list of default extensions blurs the line. That it seemingly is a proxy to closed source product from another company makes things even murkier. I can see a point for a for-pay external extension, but this one feels more like an AD for other company's services.
datadrivenangel|11 months ago
I actually really like the close partnerships in theory because it aligns incentives, but this crosses the line by not being open enough. The tight motherduck integration with DuckDB for externally hosted DuckDB/Motherduck databases is fine and good: preferential treatment where the software makes it easy to use the sponsoring service. The local UI which is actually fully dependent on the external service is off-putting. It's a little less bad because it's an extension, but it's still worrying from a governance and principals perspective.