If you can do a Rust rewrite with AI, I can create one as well. What makes yours better than mine? Your decade long expertise in database or Rust language? Your reputation? Your proven track record to manage large, complex projects? Your time committed to the project? I don't see any of that.
I don't know why anyone would choose this over the actively (community) maintained proper Postgres project.
His project is cool. Students could use it as an example of porting code. Companies could switch to it, if it works. There are hundreds of reasons why people may want it, so it's awesome he's publishing one. Something needs to be done to get interest and then adoption.
The project is not cool. This is not a new idea, and there is nothing special.
Students won't use it as an example of porting code. I am not aware "porting code" is part of standard software engineering or computer science curriculum. That's not the kind of thing being taught in schools.
Companies won't switch to it unless their CTOs are either insane or incompetent.
If someone did this before with PG, provide links. Practical pragmatic example where I think this project is cool: process vs thread. There were members of the PG core team that wanted to explore it, and members who said it'd tank a project. pgrust is an amazing experimentation ground for it.
I published similar project here: www.emuko.dev - emulator for RISC-V. This one turned out to be 3x as slow as QEMU for example.
re: CTOs - if the improvement is 3% nobody of course will look at it. If the improvement is 30%, it'll be too big for big players to ignore, so as a CTO you'll be tasked with trying it out. It's really a matter of whether this thing is safe and secure, losing data or has a trojan. If the authors can prove it's all valid working code etc., it'll be a viable project.
It's a matter of whether this project will provide bug fixes, will continue to exist next month and whether the company will end up scrambling to replace it. No CTO cares about (very) questionable "improvements". They care about if it works and will continue to work.
Sorry, as someone who has been involved in many of these decisions, I don't think you understand how any of this actually works in the real world.
There are people who see red whenever AI is involved. We've been automating away jobs for years, but now that we're starting to automate our own jobs, all of a sudden it's a moral outrage. People are just being emotional and not thinking straight. It will take a generation or two for it all to be accepted without drama.
There's so much to do in databases, and it's so hard to get right and test is all, I think we'll all have 10x the jobs. The easy stuff will go away, but to e.g.: test the new DB engine and ensure there aren't any exploits -> let's just work on it. But it's not that the introduction of compilers made engineers obsolete.
Just keep using the proper Postgres project if it makes more sense to you. But notice that this isn't just a strict translation, it actually makes changes (moving from process to thread based design, for instance). Time will tell if people find these changes beneficial or if the original remains preferable.
It's also worth noting, that while you are able to use LLM's to produce your own translation, he's actually done it. There's value in actually putting in the work.
This isn't a unique situation at all. Many Postgres extensions are developed and maintained by a single person, and may therefore be avoided by more conservative users, even if they offer some technical advantages. To each, their own.
There’s no claim being made that your rewrite cannot be better.
He has provided benchmark results which provide a dimension amongst which to measure your rewrite. If you can do better by all means post your rewrite.
Finally, these kind of projects can eventually over time become projects that are actively used. Postgres is not some entity that existed before the universe was created; it was also created by someone and then eventually adoption picked up over time.
In terms of the software industry, Postgres actually is kind of that entity. It predates the entire commercial DB (and, er software) industry and is one of the first implementations of a viable relational database server, back into the 70s.
It has a 40ish year continuous history. (Which is also why it has technical/design warts like process-per-connection that we probably wouldn't do in 2026, but that's another story.)
Even with that I remember getting funny looks 20-ish years ago when I would advocate for using it instead of MySQL.
Came here to the same thing. I did something similar (but bolder, it doesn't slavishly copy Postgres and is based on current DB research papers and the like, and other bits I've been exposed to over the years). It has a full TPC-C-esque benchmark suite, replication, embedded v8/JavaScript relations/stored procedures, a giant suite of regression tests, it kicks the crap out of a lot of existing OLTP DB stuff out there. And I personally do have a background in commercial DB development.
But I choose not to publish it or promote it for many of the reasons you mention above (and more)
... For one, if "I" can do it, so can a hundred other people. And all the bold claims behind it would need to be backed up and supported and it promoted, etc, which is a whole pile of time that doesn't involve writing code.
It's the organization around a project that matters, not the code. It's not the 90s anymore w/ people piling into MySQL because it was the only option. People aren't going to be trusting your software with their data, if they can't trust you.
And unless someone is going to dump a pile of money or something on [me|them], I don't have the ability to build that organization ... as I need to feed my family... Nor am I willing to put my personal reputation on the line by putting up a huge quickly written application and then someone finding something in it I can't explain.
So like probably 500 other projects I have it sitting in a private repo.
It's a very weird time right now. "Technical" excellence isn't the important part. Organizational excellence is. This was always the case but it's more so now.
... In the meantime, if anybody has angel investment to burn, I have something potentially better/more-exciting than this guy's project but... see above...
Author of this project is not that different than you. The only difference is that he is willing to take the risk. If you have an invention and sit on it, nothing will happen.
Don't give up. Just publish it, if you know your invention is better. Devtool VCs will give you money based on the growth of your GitHub stars, popularity and the size of community. I can even intro you to some - but it can't be to "burn angel money". You'd just have to commit to build a DB company for 10yrs. Devtool community building is low effort: Discord channel and you can write code in 1 window, and talk in another as your thing is testing/compiling.
I don't know why anyone would choose this over the actively (community) maintained proper Postgres project.