A coalition of prominent companies, including AWS and Percona, has come together to ensure the continued maintenance of pgBackRest, a crucial extension for the open-source PostgreSQL database. This initiative emerged after the project’s future was uncertain following the departure of its long-time maintainer, David Steele, who had dedicated 13 years to its development.
pgBackRest serves as a vital backup and restore solution for PostgreSQL, a relational database management system that has gained widespread adoption among major cloud service providers such as AWS, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure. Steele, a principal architect at Crunchy Data, had been at the helm of pgBackRest until June of last year when Crunchy Data was acquired by Snowflake, a company focused on cloud data analytics.
A spokesperson from Snowflake expressed their commitment to open-source software, stating, “Open source software is built on broad community participation, and we are pleased to see continued support for pgBackRest from organizations across the ecosystem. Snowflake supports a variety of open-source projects, including within the Postgres ecosystem, and we look forward to continued community collaboration.”
In a recent announcement, Steele revealed his inability to maintain pgBackRest due to a lack of sponsorship and support following the acquisition. He noted, “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.” His search for sponsorship had yielded insufficient results, prompting him to contemplate new roles that would limit his availability for the project.
Fortunately, a consortium of interested companies has now pledged their support for the ongoing development of pgBackRest. Steele remarked, “Their support means the project is no longer reliant on a single sponsor, giving pgBackRest the stability it needs for the long term.”
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In addition to AWS and Percona, other sponsors include Supabase, known for its backend platform built on PostgreSQL, and pgEdge, which specializes in open-source distributed PostgreSQL solutions. Percona, an open-source consultancy and technology provider, highlighted the importance of pgBackRest, stating that thousands of organizations rely on it for PostgreSQL backup and recovery, including those utilizing Percona’s Expert Support for PostgreSQL.
Percona CEO Peter Farkas emphasized the necessity of collaboration, saying, “pgBackRest has been our recommended backup solution/tool for years. When its future came into question, coordinating with other companies to keep it healthy was a straightforward decision – for our customers and for the community.” The coalition also includes Tiger Data, creators of TimescaleDB, who have committed to supporting bug fixes, feature enhancements, and community reviews.
Looking ahead, Percona plans to onboard a new maintainer to ensure continuity for the project while actively seeking additional sponsors to further reduce reliance on any single maintainer.
