Pgbackrest is no longer being maintained

Project status and reasons for shutdown

• Maintainer announced pgBackRest is no longer maintained; repo will be archived with an obsolescence notice.
• Reason: loss of corporate sponsorship after an acquisition, failed attempts to find a role or sponsorship to fund continued work, and inability to justify unpaid maintenance time.
• Maintainer prefers a clean stop over sporadic, low-quality maintenance.

Forking, naming, and trust

• Code is MIT-licensed, so forking is allowed and expected; maintainer explicitly asks forks to use a new name.
• Rationale discussed:
  • Avoid confusing users about who is responsible now.
  • Reduce risk of supply-chain or malware attacks under an established, trusted name.
  • Trust and reputation are tied to the original maintainer, not the repo stars.
• Some see this as “salting the earth” and limiting continuity; others argue it’s responsible given security and liability concerns.

Alternatives and technical discussion

• Suggested alternatives: WAL-G, Barman, pg_probackup, pghoard, databasus, pgbackweb, and built‑in pg_basebackup (with new incremental features in recent Postgres versions).
• Users compare:
  • pgBackRest seen as feature-rich, robust, especially around restore/validation, PITR, offloading to standbys, and cloud storage.
  • WAL-G praised for streaming PITR and replicas, but docs confusing; questions about true continuous WAL streaming.
  • Barman described as reliable at scale, though older incremental approach (hardlinks) and compression/cloud replication have tradeoffs.
  • databasus noted as young but easy to use, recently added PITR.
• Some mention ZFS snapshots and Postgres’ own backup tooling; consensus is that third‑party tools mainly add orchestration/QoL.

Open source sustainability and funding

• Strong theme: critical OSS maintained essentially for free until burnout.
• Debate over:
  • Donations vs. paid licensing, dual licensing (e.g., GPL + commercial), revenue/profit‑tiered licenses, and “open core.”
  • Whether large companies using such tools have a moral obligation to fund them.
  • Difficulty for individual devs to turn a popular OSS project into a viable business.
• Several note an apparent rise in key infrastructure projects being dropped due to financial or mental fatigue.

Community reactions and meta‑discussion

• Many users express sadness and concern; some admit they were about to or currently rely on pgBackRest in production.
• Heated subthread on whether users who never contributed are “entitled” to be sad, and broader expectations around supporting tools one depends on.
• Some predict more such shutdowns as engineers prioritize paid work, especially amid job insecurity and AI‑driven pressure.