Er, your accusations about Acquia here are both incorrect and offensive.
For the record, Acquia was only marginally involved in getting the new database API into Drupal 7 in the first place (probably 95% or more of the work and technical direction for this particular feature was contributed by non-Acquians). Also, given that we (Acquia) own a MySQL-based Drupal website hosting business (and don't really have MSSQL or Oracle expertise on staff so it's certainly not our preference to have clients who want to run Drupal on those systems), the implication that this was some kind of Acquia-directed conspiracy really makes no sense.
Also, the primary motivation of the new database API was certainly not to support these proprietary database systems anyway. Other databases whose code is free (especially SQLite, which is now supported directly in Drupal 7 core) are much more important. And cross-database support is definitely not the only useful feature of the new database API, just one of them. I would suggest reading e.g. http://www.garfieldtech.com/blog/database-tng-lands for more information.
Regarding CCK, it's hard to understand why you are so concerned about features being "locked" in Drupal core for the next few years? For one thing, they're not locked (certain features might still be added to Drupal 7 if they don't change things in a way that will break existing code), but more important, the entire way Drupal works is that core functionality can easily be extended by contrib modules to meet additional needs. As described in the link I provided earlier, the functionality you're looking for is apparently being implemented by the Field Collection module in Drupal 7 (and due to the Field API, it's being done in a way that knowledgeable people seem to agree is much better than any implementation that would be possible with CCK in Drupal 6). So it's not really clear why are you are apparently comfortable typing "drush dl cck" to install CCK for Drupal 6, but not comfortable typing "drush dl field_collection" to install this (or other) modules you might need for Drupal 7.
For the record, Acquia was only marginally involved in getting the new database API into Drupal 7 in the first place (probably 95% or more of the work and technical direction for this particular feature was contributed by non-Acquians). Also, given that we (Acquia) own a MySQL-based Drupal website hosting business (and don't really have MSSQL or Oracle expertise on staff so it's certainly not our preference to have clients who want to run Drupal on those systems), the implication that this was some kind of Acquia-directed conspiracy really makes no sense.
Also, the primary motivation of the new database API was certainly not to support these proprietary database systems anyway. Other databases whose code is free (especially SQLite, which is now supported directly in Drupal 7 core) are much more important. And cross-database support is definitely not the only useful feature of the new database API, just one of them. I would suggest reading e.g. http://www.garfieldtech.com/blog/database-tng-lands for more information.
Regarding CCK, it's hard to understand why you are so concerned about features being "locked" in Drupal core for the next few years? For one thing, they're not locked (certain features might still be added to Drupal 7 if they don't change things in a way that will break existing code), but more important, the entire way Drupal works is that core functionality can easily be extended by contrib modules to meet additional needs. As described in the link I provided earlier, the functionality you're looking for is apparently being implemented by the Field Collection module in Drupal 7 (and due to the Field API, it's being done in a way that knowledgeable people seem to agree is much better than any implementation that would be possible with CCK in Drupal 6). So it's not really clear why are you are apparently comfortable typing "drush dl cck" to install CCK for Drupal 6, but not comfortable typing "drush dl field_collection" to install this (or other) modules you might need for Drupal 7.