Let's talk about Building the next generation of Postgres open source contributors | Claire Giordano | PGConf.dev 2026

Slides from a conference talk at PGConf.dev 2026 in Vancouver Canada. Abstract: How do we find and nurture the next generation of open source contributors? Unlike commercial companies, open source projects don’t have legions of recruiters to bring people into the fold—and yet our projects need a steady stream of new contributors. Or should open source projects assume that new contributors (and future committers) will continue to “self-select” onto the project?

The PostgreSQL open source project turns 30 in 2026: Happy Birthday! It has evolved from a small project that some referred to as “just a toy”—to today, where Postgres is thriving with an active community and a vast ecosystem of extensions and tooling. The project is clearly doing some things right. Postgres is hugely popular, with a healthy upstream open source community plus a host of companies and products built around Postgres itself.

But what happens when the current generation of Postgres committers step back or retire—where will the next generation of Postgres contributors come from?

This talk is a reprise of a talk given earlier this year on the Main Track at FOSDEM—with more time for audience Q&A, so we can discuss together how contributors find their way into Postgres: what is working, what did not, and where we’re still struggling.

Transcript

1. Let’s talk about… Building the next generation of Postgres open source contributors Claire Giordano @clairegiordano@hachyderm.io
2. Developer Eng Manager PM Marketer Writer Open-source champ Community Lead Podcaster @clairegiordano @clairegiordano.bsky.social PGCA Board POSETTE: An Event for Postgres
3. Challenge shared by many open source projects How to build the next generation of contributors?
4. Different types of contributors in open source project This talk MOSTLY focused on code contributors…
5. Inspired by guests on ‘Talking Postgres’ podcast TalkingPostgres.com
7. Happy 30th Birthday to PostgreSQL open source project! 7
8. # committers grown from 5 to 31 in 30 yrs Active Committers N.B. In Postgres, maintainers are called “committers” 8 Source: Tomas Vondra
10. How much changed in Postgres 18? 3,043 total commits 3,986 (55%) files changed PG18 > 410k lines of code changed, out of ~850k total @ GA ~15 months of changes @clairegiordano 279 Code/Doc authors 20% vs. PG17 35,704 pgsql-hackers mailing list posts 83 First-time Code/Doc authors 36% vs. PG17
11. How many people contributed to PG in 2025? Total contributors 367+ Significant contributors 124 Major contributors 59 31 Committers 7 Core team 0 11 more than 100 200 # contributors 300 400 @clairegiordano
12. Postgres contributor community is global 31 committers from 11 countries, as of Sep 2025 Andrew Dunstan USA Masahiko Sawada USA Jacob Champion USA Jeff Davis USA Nathan Bossart USA Noah Misch USA Andres Freund USA Peter Geoghegan USA Daniel Gustafsson Sweden Magnus Hagander Sweden Melanie Plageman USA Tom Lane USA Joe Conway USA Fujii Masao Japan Tatsuo Ishii Japan Alexander Korotkov Lithuania Robert Haas USA Bruce Momjian USA Heikki Linnakangas Finland Dean Rasheed UK Tomas Vondra Czech Republic Álvaro Herrera Germany Peter Eisentraut Germany Etsuro Fujita Japan Amit Langote Japan Amit Kapila India John Naylor Thailand Thomas Munro New Zealand Michaël Paquier Japan Richard Guo Japan David Rowley New Zealand
13. Who are these contributors to Postgres? Drive-by contributors Part-time Hobbyists (I don’t know any, but believe they exist) 13 Full-time @clairegiordano
14. How do people get involved in Postgres? First Get Interested Funnel diagram is NOT drawn to scale @clairegiordano
15. How do people get involved in Postgres? First Get Interested •Drawn to success of PG •Scratch an itch •Curious (or bored) •Want to work on DBs •Hired to work on PG Funnel diagram is NOT drawn to scale @clairegiordano
16. How do people get involved in Postgres? First Get Interested •Lurk on Mailing Lists •Email on Lists •Patch review •Attend workshops •Attend conferences •Attend PGConf.dev •PG Hacking Discord •Mentorship program @clairegiordano • Drawn to success of PG • Scratch an itch • Curious (or bored) • Want to work on DBs • Hired to work on PG “Activated” Funnel diagram is NOT drawn to scale
17. How do people get involved in Postgres? First Get Interested • Lurk on Mailing Lists • Email on Lists • Patch review • Attend workshops • Attend conferences • Attend PGConf.dev • PG Hacking Discord • Mentorship program @clairegiordano • Drawn to success of PG • Scratch an itch • Curious, or bored • Want to work on PG • Hired to work on PG “Activated” Advancing •Commits (code/docs) •Patch Review •Email on Lists •Talks/Blogs/Share •Recognized contributor
18. How do people get involved in Postgres? First Get Interested • Lurk on Mailing Lists • Email on Lists • Patch review • Attend workshops • Attend conferences • Attend PGConf.dev • PG Hacking Discord • Mentorship program @clairegiordano “Activated” Advancing Long Game • Drawn to success of PG • Scratch an itch • Curious, or bored • Want to work on PG • Hired to work on PG • Commits (code/docs) • Patch Review • Email on Lists • Talks/Blogs/Share • Recognized contributor •Major contributor •Mentor/Teach •Community work •Advocacy •Committer
19. How do people get involved in Postgres? First Get Interested • Lurk on Mailing Lists • Email on Lists • Patch review • Attend workshops • Attend conferences • Attend PGConf.dev • PG Hacking Discord • Mentorship program @clairegiordano “Activated” Advancing Long Game • Drawn to success of PG • Scratch an itch • Curious, or bored • Want to work on PG • Hired to work on PG • Commits (code/docs) • Patch Review • Email on Lists • Talks/Blogs/Share • Recognized contributor • Major contributor • Mentor/Teach • Community work • Advocacy • Committer
20. While most people share that funnel— the specific triggers are so different! 20
21. MySQL meltdown led to Postgres “We used MySQL. And there was a particular moment where we got some coverage, our website was mentioned on some US TV or radio program. We got a lot of hits—and our system completely melted down.” —Thomas Munro, Ep04 of Talking Postgres
22. Paternity leave & a baby that sleeps “I was on paternity leave with my second child and she was a good sleeper. That was a very easy time, but I had a couple of months of feeding the baby & then watching her sleep. I had a lot of spare time on my hands! So I started to look around for open source projects to work on.” —Heikki Linnakangas, Ep08 of Talking Postgres
23. Getting nudged by a professor “The professor who was teaching it pulled me aside and said, you really ought to go apply to be a research assistant in the department because you're good at this. And so I said, OK, because I needed a parttime job and that sounded way better than flipping burgers.” —Tom Lane, Ep20 of Talking Postgres
25. Shout-out to Tracy Kidder And the notion that software isn’t just logic… It’s a reflection of the people who built it. 25
26. Look at Postgres thru 3 different lenses THE SOUL THE MACHINE THE FUEL • Human Ecosystem • Community • Trust • Culture • Dev Workflows • Tooling • Decision-making • Governance • Economics • Funding • Avoiding burnout @clairegiordano
27. Had to cherry pick topics >> What’s working >> Where we’re still struggling
28. Chapter 1: The Soul THE SOUL THE MACHINE THE FUEL • Human Ecosystem • Community • Trust • Culture • Dev Workflows • Tooling • Decision-making • Governance • Economics • Funding • Avoiding burnout @clairegiordano
29. Soul Working Welcoming Community Open to new people, new ideas Places to build TRUST: • Meetups • Conferences Source: Boriss Mejías & PGDay Lowlands team
30. Soul Working Joy of Working on Postgres Nazir Bilal Yavuz “Postgres is so big and has so many different subsystems, there’s bound to be something you want to work on”
31. Soul Working High-touch 1-on-1 Mentoring POSTGRESQL
32. Soul Working Experimenting with Annual Development Conference PGConf.dev, now in its 3rd year, annually in Canada Source: Original photo credit to Claire Giordano. Photo of PGConf.dev 2025 organizers taken in Montréal Canada.
33. Soul Working Recognizing Sustained Contribution Rewarding & recognizing good work Source: postgresql.org/community/ contributors
34. Soul Struggling Not enough future committers in pipeline It takes years to become “committer grade”
35. Soul Struggling Do we accidentally overlook people for promotion?
36. Soul Struggling Is there a DESERT in the middle? Are we giving major contributors the mentoring & attention they need?
37. Chapter 2: The Machine THE SOUL THE MACHINE THE FUEL • Human Ecosystem • Community • Trust • Culture • Dev Workflows • Tooling • Decision-making • Governance • Economics • Funding • Avoiding burnout @clairegiordano
38. Machine Working Rhythym of Dev Lifecycle Commitfests 5x/year Annual releases Quarterly patch releases Predictability
39. Machine Working Invisible benefits of Patch Review
40. Machine Working Dedication & skill of committers Big magnet to working on Postgres is the chance to work with these database heroes… Original Photo Credit: Tomas Vondra. Developer meeting @ PGConf.dev in May 2025, Montréal Canada
41. Machine Working Intro to Hacking workshops & Office Hours Original photo credit to Gülcin Yıldırım Jelínek. “Intro to Postgres Hacking” Workshop led by Nazir Bilal Yavuz & Tomas Vondra in Jan 2026
42. Machine Working CI infra has brought light to the darkness Enabling automated dev test No longer have to break Build Farm…
43. Machine Struggling Patch Review Bandwidth— not enough!
44. Machine Struggling Do we need component committers?
45. Machine Struggling Is Mailing List culture a barrier to entry?
46. Machine Working Discord as new channel for hackers PostgreSQL Hacking Up to 1,704 members URL: discord.gg/npcQcsXjKG
47. Machine Struggling Is C programming language a barrier to entry?
48. Machine Struggling Getting Started info: fragmented, incomplete, out-of-date
49. Machine Struggling AI-generated patches Changing monthly Amazing—or overwhelming? Pernicious risk: will it prevent learning?
50. Found myself wondering (as worked on this talk)
51. Chapter 3: The Fuel THE SOUL THE MACHINE THE FUEL • Human Ecosystem • Community • Trust • Culture • Dev Workflows • Tooling • Decision-making • Governance • Economics • Funding • Avoiding burnout @clairegiordano
52. Fuel Working Commercial Gravity of Postgres Postgres keeps on getting more popular “Postgres is hot”
53. Fuel Working Corporate Funding of Contributors ALT TITLE: “Paycheck providers” @clairegiordano
54. Fuel Struggling Committer Paranoia Easy to imagine this is how committers feel when they type: git push Source: Robert Haas of EDB, “Committer Paranoia” talk at PGConf.dev 2025
55. Fuel Struggling Committer Paranoia Reality is more likely this: STRESS! Source: Robert Haas of EDB, “Committer Paranoia” talk at PGConf.dev 2025
56. Fuel Struggling People are going to move on— retire— or burn out
58. Good news: Postgres has already proven we can evolve— and scale @clairegiordano
59. Have to keep evolving Embrace needs of future developers— without compromising needs of the present @clairegiordano
60. Fix patch review throughput Can’t afford to discourage the next generation @clairegiordano
61. If going to change / experiment with / do just one thing differently… Fix patch review throughput
62. If you want to become a Postgres hacker… 62 @clairegiordano
63. If you want to become a Postgres hacker… Programming skills Follow-through do you stick around to fix the mistakes? Build knowledge of different subsystems Communication skills Track record of delivery & good decisions 63 Collaboration skills how do others perceive you? do they trust you? do you listen? are you able to reconsider? Ability to work (and fail) in public @clairegiordano
64. If you’re planning for your next event… 64 @clairegiordano
65. Check out POSETTE: An Event for Postgres, free & virtual Álvaro Herrera, Heikki Linnakangas, KEYNOTE: Postgres 19 Hackers Panel: What’s In, What’s Out, Melanie Plageman, & What’s Next Thomas Munro Ashutosh Bapat Exploring property graphs with SQL/PGQ in PostgreSQL Bruce Momjian The Wonderful World of WAL Hari Kiran Past, Present, and Future: Logical Decoding and Replication in PostgreSQL Jeremy Schneider Quorum-Based Consistency for Cluster Changes with CloudNativePG Operator Jimmy Angelakos LISTEN Carefully: How NOTIFY Can Trip Up Your Database Marco Slot pg_lake: Postgres as a lakehouse Rahila Syed Journey of developing a performance optimization feature in PostgreSQL Tomas Vondra random_page_cost in Postgres - why the default is 4.0 and should you lower it?
66. Adam Wolk Andres Freund Ashutosh Bapat Boriss Mejías Bruce Momjian Charles Feddersen Daniel Gustafsson Greg Burd Isaac Alves Joe Conway People to thank for inspiration & reviews & Melanie Plageman Nazir Bilal Yavuz Noah Misch Peter Eisentraut Robert Haas Stephen Walli Thomas Munro Tom Lane Tomas Vondra All the hackers at Postgres Developer Meeting @ FOSDEM 2026
67. z z @clairegiordano@hachyderm.io @clairegiordano.bsky.social @clairegiordano linkedin.com/in/claireg TalkingPostgres.com PosetteConf.com