As somebody who knows Mike Stonebraker and works for one of his RDBMS companies, I can honestly say he says this stuff because he really believes that NoSQL is history repeating itself.
Whether it's hierarchical databases, XML databases, objective databases, proprietary query languages, etc..., people keep trying new things and then coming back to the relational model and SQL. When people say "This time it's different", he gets annoyed. Maybe this time he's wrong, but with an understanding of the history of databases, it's easy for me to see his point of view.
Honestly, I'm not sure if antagonizing the NoSQL community helps his companies or not. The NoSQL crowd is pretty passionate.
Whether it's hierarchical databases, XML databases, objective databases, proprietary query languages, etc..., people keep trying new things and then coming back to the relational model and SQL. When people say "This time it's different", he gets annoyed. Maybe this time he's wrong, but with an understanding of the history of databases, it's easy for me to see his point of view.
Honestly, I'm not sure if antagonizing the NoSQL community helps his companies or not. The NoSQL crowd is pretty passionate.