If most queries take ~ 1s on a relatively small 80MB dataset, then it sounds to me like they really needed to run EXPLAIN on their most complex queries and then

If most queries take ~ 1s on a relatively small 80MB dataset, then it sounds to me like they really needed to run EXPLAIN on their most complex queries and then tune their indexes to match. They could have probably stayed with SQLite, in fact, because most likely it's a serious indexing problem, and then found a better way to distribute the 80MB file rather than committing it to Github. (Although there are worse ideas, esp with LFS)