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Pgbackrest is no longer being maintained

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Why This Matters

The discontinuation of pgBackRest's maintenance marks a significant shift for PostgreSQL users relying on this trusted backup solution. As open-source projects depend on active support and development, this change underscores the need for the community to find or develop alternative tools to ensure data safety and reliability. For consumers and the industry, it highlights the importance of sustainable open-source project management and the potential impact of project abandonment.

Key Takeaways

pgBackRest

Reliable PostgreSQL Backup & Restore

NOTICE OF OBSOLESCENCE

TL;DR: pgBackRest is no longer being maintained. If you fork pgBackRest, please select a new name for your project.

After a lot of thought, I have decided to stop working on pgBackRest. I did not come to this decision lightly. pgBackRest has been my passion project for the last thirteen years, and I was fortunate to have corporate sponsorship for much of this time, but there were also many late nights and weekends as I worked to make pgBackRest the project it is today, aided by numerous contributors. Every open-source developer knows exactly what I mean and how much of your life gets devoted to a special project.

Since Crunchy Data was sold, I have been maintaining pgBackRest and looking for a position that would allow me to continue the work, but so far I have not been successful. Likewise, my efforts to secure sponsorship have also fallen far short of what I need to make the project viable.

Like everyone else, I need to make a living, and the range of pgBackRest-related roles is very limited. I can now consider a wider variety of opportunities, but those will not leave me time to work on pgBackRest, which requires a fair amount of time for maintenance, bug fixes, PR reviews, answering issues, etc. That does not even include time to write new features, which is what I really love to do. Rather than do the work poorly and/or sporadically, I think it makes more sense to have a hard stop.

I imagine at some point pgBackRest will be forked, but that will be a new project with new maintainers, and they will need to build trust the same way we did.

Again, many thanks to all the pgBackRest contributors over the years. It was a pleasure working with you!

Introduction

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