Notice of Obsolescence

8 hours ago

David Steele announced the discontinuation of pgBackRest, the most widely-deployed PostgreSQL backup tool, after 13 years of maintenance, due to lack of funding.
The end of funding followed Crunchy Data's acquisition by Snowflake, which shifted priorities away from community-critical projects like pgBackRest.
Open-source infrastructure like pgBackRest often relies on individuals or small teams, making it fragile when sponsors withdraw or maintainers' circumstances change.
Consolidation in the PostgreSQL industry leads to acquisitions where community work may become non-strategic, risking similar project discontinuations.
Alternatives to pgBackRest include PostgreSQL's built-in pg_basebackup with pg_combinebackup, EDB's Barman, community-maintained WAL-G, cloud-managed backups, and logical backups via pg_dump.
Existing pgBackRest deployments remain functional but will not receive updates; users are advised to plan migration within months to a year and consider forks with new names.
The core issue is systemic underfunding of open-source software, where beneficiaries contribute less than they gain, highlighting the need for sustainable funding models.

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