given that postgres is free as in beer, i think in practice this just means the definition of less flexible and more polished tiers, up to and including db-as-a-service.

this seems like a nice model - more useful than the tens or hundreds of functionally equivalent linux distributions. you can start out with generic turnkey postgres-lite and unwrap as much as you like.

that said, despite quite a bit of progress in the last few years, postgres-lite could be easier to install and maintain.