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Pgbackrest is no longer being maintained

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Re: Pgbackrest is no longer being maintained

#221

Post by WaitWaitWha »

loloquwowndueo wrote: post #203
WaitWaitWha wrote: post #99

do not yell at me, but... this is where genAI may be useful. what if, bare with me, what if, after a certain amount of time, a certain amount of "requests", a code library can be given to a genAI to maintain; no improvements, no extra features, just bug fixes? This could continue until either someone picks it up, or the open source solution becomes irrelevant, not enough "requests". Yes, lots of details to work out.

*bear, not bare.

No. I meant bare. As in "... what if, expose/uncover [this topic] with me, what if, ..."

Re: Pgbackrest is no longer being maintained

#222

Post by somat »

cornstalks wrote: post #197
registeredcorn wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a reason why more OSS projects don't follow this model? It sounds like you are saying that there are clear advantages here that other OSS projects lack.

SQLite is arguably the most widely deployed database in the world. It also has its roots in government/defense contracting so it was built with navigating that kind of red tape in mind. Most OSS projects simply don’t have that kind of weight or discipline to follow SQLite’s footsteps.

I suspect the government contract roots are what lead to it being placed in the public domain.

It did not have to, they could(and some would argue probably should) have gone the normal copyright with public use license route. But I suspect that because US government code by default is in the public domain(the US government has means other than copyright to protect it's IP) and this code was originally written for a cancelled US government project. That was their default mindset when they wanted to release it.

Note that I am using a sort of editorial they here, I think it was largely the effort of one person.

It is probably telling that with fossil, a supporting project to sqlite, they went the more normal route and released it under copyright with a BSD type license.

I like the idea of public domain(some things belong to us collectively), but it does raise an interesting question if a private individual can place something in the public domain. Are you allowed to give up your rights?

Re: Pgbackrest is no longer being maintained

#223

Post by skibbityboop »

infinet wrote: post #188
joshmn wrote: post #25

I have a moderately sized 2TB production database I have enjoyed using pgBackRest on, and was—this week—going to set it up on another 8TB database we have. What's the next-closest thing? wal-g? barman? databasus? I only get to cosplay as a DBA.

Anyone put the standby on ZFS or other filesystems that can take snapshots for backup?

Not for PostgreSQL, but for MariaDB we run replicas in FreeBSD jails on a server with lots of ZFS space. The jailed Maria instances just stop every hour (so the DB flushes everything to disk), the host snapshots all of their data volumes, and then starts the jails back up. Within a minute or so they're fully caught up to the primaries again. Gives us months and months of recovery checkpoints.

It's great because it's a completely clean save from a shutdown state, so when we need a scratch copy of a database it only takes as long as cloning whatever snapshot we want (depending on how far back we need to to), then starting a scratch jail that runs from those clone filesystems. When finished, just shutdown scratch and delete the clones, it's like it never happened.

Re: Pgbackrest is no longer being maintained

#224

Post by marcus_holmes »

2ndorderthought wrote: post #57
topham wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sigh. Bane of my existence is any service which does this. My org theoretically makes hundreds of millions, unfortunately none of that money is ours. So I get forced into a procurement process for anything that costs more than (ridiculously small limit), and get stuck using the worst in class because it's cheaper.

It would be great if github or someone did something to support licenses like this. So procurement was more like a cloud spend. Companies could put caps on the monthly spend for the projects they use. Organizations should be used to paying for products from individuals just like how they do from megacorporations.

So... Spotify but for OSS?

I'm not sure this worked out as well as we thought it might do for the musicians.

Re: Pgbackrest is no longer being maintained

#225

Post by marcus_holmes »

duskdozer wrote: post #54
topham wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sigh. Bane of my existence is any service which does this. My org theoretically makes hundreds of millions, unfortunately none of that money is ours. So I get forced into a procurement process for anything that costs more than (ridiculously small limit), and get stuck using the worst in class because it's cheaper.

May be inconvenient to you, but the point of licenses like that is that inconvenience to companies that aren't willing to pay for the work.

I think the point was that this is a company that is willing to pay for the work, but corporate procurement doesn't work like that.

If you don't have a discretionary spending limit that will accommodate it, then trying to get OSS through procurement is difficult. Who is providing the support contract? What level of indemnity insurance is the supplier covered by? Can you get a spread of three quotes from competitive providers?

Not to mention that if the supplier isn't VAT/GST registered, the accounts department can be operationally incapable of accepting an invoice or issuing payment.

Not malicious, this is best practice for a large organisation that needs to prove that it is not doing fraud. But it does present a huge obstacle to buying from small organisations, startups, and one-person OSS maintainers.

Re: Pgbackrest is no longer being maintained

#226

Post by bsder »

pjmlp wrote: post #31

Plenty of comments of "So sad I have been using this". How many actually contributed back to keep it going?

> How many actually contributed back to keep it going?

Or why not hire the guy?!

Seriously. Is nobody using this at a level where hiring the primary maintainer is a good idea?

Re: Pgbackrest is no longer being maintained

#228

Post by freakynit »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #225
duskdozer wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

May be inconvenient to you, but the point of licenses like that is that inconvenience to companies that aren't willing to pay for the work.

I think the point was that this is a company that is willing to pay for the work, but corporate procurement doesn't work like that. If you don't have a discretionary spending limit that will accommodate it, then trying to get OSS through procurement is difficult. Who is providing the support contract? What level of indemnity insurance is the supplier covered by? Can you get a spread of three quotes from competitive p…

Agree. Does solving this itself a good product idea? A company specializing in making these deals happen? Taking on the legal and corporate aspects? Kinda like freelancer platforms work.., but, more corporate forcused?

Re: Pgbackrest is no longer being maintained

#229

Post by watwut »

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #89
tclancy wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I tend to agree with the line of thinking in this thread that the ethos of open source (and the web writ large) have been taken advantage of by capitalism, I can't quite see this: things belong to a time and place in one's life. The creator feels like his time with this project is at an end, but why would that be an impediment to someone who needs a package like this stepping up and maintaining it? Better to do…

> have been taken advantage of by capitalism “And many programmers, they say to me, “The people who hire programmers demand this, this and this. If I don't do those things, I'll starve.” It's literally the word they use. Well, you know, as a waiter, you're not going to starve. So, really, they're in no danger.” - Richard Stallman in 2001 admitting his ideology can’t explain how a programmer can eat In my opinion, tho…

I mean, repeated claims about starving programmers I see HN are indeed ridiculously dramatic. They show up in relation to open source, but mostly as arguments why all those highly paid people just must do unethical things, else they will starve.

I am not even fan of Stallman. I think it is ok to produce close software. But starving argument is just not it.

Re: Pgbackrest is no longer being maintained

#230

Post by [deleted] »

somat wrote: post #222
cornstalks wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SQLite is arguably the most widely deployed database in the world. It also has its roots in government/defense contracting so it was built with navigating that kind of red tape in mind. Most OSS projects simply don’t have that kind of weight or discipline to follow SQLite’s footsteps.

I suspect the government contract roots are what lead to it being placed in the public domain. It did not have to, they could(and some would argue probably should) have gone the normal copyright with public use license route. But I suspect that because US government code by default is in the public domain(the US government has means other than copyright to protect it's IP) and this code was originally written for a c…

[deleted]
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