The Linux Foundation has brought DocumentDB into its project portfolio, a move that gives the fast-rising document database a vendor-neutral home under the flexible MIT license and positions it to define an open standard for NoSQL. The decision, announced at Open Source Summit Europe, formalizes momentum that’s been building since Microsoft launched the project earlier this year.
DocumentDB started in 2024 as a pair of PostgreSQL extensions that add native BSON support and document-style queries. It has transformed into a full-featured open-source document database running atop PostgreSQL, compatible with popular MongoDB drivers. The bet is straightforward: blend NoSQL flexibility with Postgres’s durability, tooling, and ecosystem, without imposing license constraints that limit how cloud providers or enterprises can deploy the software.
Backers include a remarkable cross section of tech vendors: AWS, Google, Microsoft, Cockroach Labs, Supabase, Yugabyte, and others. Their shared incentive is portability. If document databases are standardized the way SQL standardized relational systems, developers can move workloads more freely across vendors and clouds, trimming cost and reducing risk.
“We look forward to contributing our large scale data interoperability tooling to the open source DocumentDB Linux Foundation project,” said Sailesh Krishnamurthy, VP of engineering at Google Cloud. He noted that having a neutral, permissively licensed, open source compatible database ensures that ISVs can count on the MongoDB API becoming even more widely adopted for managing document database workloads.
There’s also a licensing backstory here. MongoDB’s 2018 shift to the Server Side Public License (SSPL) was designed to prevent cloud providers from monetizing its code without open-sourcing service layers. That move, echoed by other projects in recent years, has created demand for permissively licensed alternatives. DocumentDB’s MIT license lands firmly on the “use it anywhere” end of the spectrum.
The market pressure has been visible at the grassroots level. FerretDB, a Postgres-based MongoDB-compatible layer that debuted in 2023, helped rally the Document Database Community to push for common APIs. The community argued that a neutral standard would lower friction for developers and curb lock-in. When MongoDB sued FerretDB on patent grounds this spring, the dispute underscored a broader tension: how far compatibility can go without a vendor-controlled license. DocumentDB’s Linux Foundation stewardship attempts to channel that energy into open governance rather than skirmishes.
Among the advantages of DocumentDB: Enterprises get ACID (Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, and Durability) guarantees, mature replication, and a deep bench of monitoring, backup, and management tools. For AI-era workloads like chat context, retrieval, and application memory, DocumentDB pairs JSON/BSON agility with new development features already circulating in the Postgres community.
The larger goal is full compatibility with MongoDB, a box that isn’t yet checked. Still, the mix of contributors suggests a practical path forward: a test suite that hardens compatibility over time, and a charter that keeps the API evolution in the open.
Confusingly, there’s more than one DocumentDB product on the market. As reported in Techstrong.it, AWS released its DocumentDB in late July. Like the open source DocumentDB, AWS’s application—which isn’t open source, but does offer MongoDB compatibility—is also geared to allow varying document structures within a data collection, which is useful for AI and other data-intensive work. AWS says it will contribute to the open source DocumentDB even as it develops its own proprietary version.
The major takeaway: This is less an anti-MongoDB moment than a pro-portability move. By anchoring a document database in a neutral foundation with a familiar SQL-world chassis, the industry is attempting to recreate the standardization that made relational software ubiquitous. Whether DocumentDB becomes that standard will rely on execution, including its compatibility progress, real-world performance, and enthusiasm of its contributor community. But with major vendors aligned and developers hungry for choice, the project enters the arena with plenty of positives on its side.
