One Monday morning in April, pgBackRest, one of the most widely used PostgreSQL backup tools, was suddenly labelled as no longer maintained. For many users and vendors, that sounded like the beginning of the end.
It wasn’t.
What followed exposed a challenge that extends far beyond a single project: critical open source infrastructure relied upon by numerous organizations, yet sustained by a handful of people operating with limited resources and support.
In this talk, we’ll revisit the events surrounding pgBackRest from two perspectives. First, we’ll hear the story of pgBackRest itself: why it was created, how it grew into a cornerstone of the PostgreSQL ecosystem, and what maintaining a widely adopted open source project actually looks like from the inside. Then we’ll examine what happened when news of its uncertain future spread across the industry, triggering reactions from users, vendors, and the wider PostgreSQL community.
Together, we’ll explore what was missing, what worked, what was misunderstood, and how the ecosystem responded. Most importantly, we’ll discuss the broader lessons around maintainership, funding, succession planning, and the shared responsibilities of users and vendors who depend on open source software every day.
Attendees will leave with a deeper understanding of the human side of open source infrastructure, practical lessons from the pgBackRest experience, and ideas for how the PostgreSQL ecosystem can become more resilient before the next crisis arrives.
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