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This is getting a lot of negative reactions. If this causes cperciva not to listen to this post, it will be a Big Tragedy. A lot of people here are ~saying "ma
by edanm 13y ago
This is getting a lot of negative reactions. If this causes cperciva not to listen to this post, it will be a Big Tragedy.
A lot of people here are ~saying "maybe cperciva isn't motivated by money". OK. I get that.
Here's the thing - I honestly believe that Tarsnap is the best backup solution. I believe this because I hang around HN, I'm a technologist, and I trust tptacek and patio11, among others, when they say it.
I am right on the edge of someone who would actually use Tarsnap - I'm a geek, but I also run a business, the money it would cost me is less than peanuts (if I could figure out how much it would cost me, that is - see the article). I'm probably not going to use Tarsnap because of a few missing but critical features that patio11 mentioned, like auto-recharging money (do I really need another bullet on my todo list, or to worry about my backups disappearing?).
But there's a whole world of people out there. People who could really, really use Tarsnap. People who have my user data on their systems, and who I wish would use a service as good as Tarsnap. These people will never, ever use Tarsnap, because of all the reasons patio11 mentioned, and because they will never hear of it or know that it's better than everything else.
What I said above has nothing to do with moral philosophy. It is a fact about the world that, if cperciva doesn't play the "marketing game" (or the "make your software useable by normal people" game), less people will use Tarsnap.
And the world will be worse off. Is this a tragedy? Sure. cperciva doesn't owe the world or anyone in it anything. It isn't a moral absolute that giving cperciva more resources, to make Tarsnap that much better, is the right thing to happen.
But I hate to see a whole forum full of people who actually think that what cperciva is doing is somehow more "noble" and less "greedy" because he doesn't care about money. *
* I have no problem with cperciva acting however he wants in this regard, and absolutely do not mean any disrespect. I honestly don't think cperciva owes anyone anything. But I do think that it's an empirical fact that the world will be worse off for less people having used a good backup solution, and I honestly believe that living ina world with more people using Tarsnap, and incidentally cperciva having more money, is a better world. If you really want - donate all that money to GiveWell, and the world will be even better off.
- psykovsky 13y agoI wonder what would happen if someone built what was described in the post and used tarsnap as the backend... Is that even possible? ;)
- ixmatus 13y agoIt is very possible and I'm remarkably tempted to do it myself in my free-time. I also believe that was the intent of Patrick posting this publicly - to stimulate Colin into realizing what people really fucking want and that someone may actually go build a better tarsnap using tarsnap if he doesn't. I'm sick of Tarsnap's complete disregard for its users; charge more money, listen to your users, improve the product! WITH ALL OF YOUR SURPLUS MONEY, INSTEAD OF BUYING A $2MILLION DOLLAR MANSION, DONATE IT TO THE FREEBSD FOUNDATION. Holy shit! What could HE DO FOR FREEBSD with the personal surplus in income from properly implementing Tarsnap as a business!?!?! IT'S FUCKING MIND BOGGLING. </rant>
- maxerickson 13y agoThe source code of the client is not under a liberal license. I guess lawyers could argue about whether reselling the service fell under 'using'. (I don't mean this to be hostile to the licensing, I just think that it is a big thing getting in the way of it being very possible to do as you say)
- ixmatus 13y agoA point worth considering, the spirit of what I said though should be considered - not specifically the details. The spirit being, that someone WILL fill this gap in the market. Someone. I would rather it be Tarsnap and Colin; though.
- atmosx 13y agoYou see a gap in the market, the op does, other comments do. But none is going to roll their own replacement because they are involved elsewhere - I see a gap in the reasoning not in the market :-)
- atmosx 13y agoYou do it. You're free to become rich yourself and donate half your fortune to the FreeBSD project we all love. Do FreeBSD a favor and make an tarsnap wrapper for businesses who need to pay 1.500 USD monthly to feel secure.
- opendais 13y agoWould you agree the best solution is for cperciva to start a second brand that is purely B2B and more in line with the blog post? I think the negative reactions stem more from an attraction to the Tarsnap brand as a G2G service combined with cperciva's cavalier attitude toward's increasing his income by charging his customers more. Regardless of patio11's thoughts, the current 'brand' would take a hit by losing the 'geek to geek' luster. The OP maintains two separate brands for separate products. Maintaining a 'premium B2B' brand for Tarsnap would bypass any negative reaction, I think. I'm not sure why the majority of the people [OP included] think a single B2B or G2G brand is the 'best option'.
- ianstormtaylor 13y agoI think a single brand is a better option in this case because it greatly reduces scope, and seeing as it's a one man business scope is the biggest enemy there is. But also because I don't see it as a black and white decision about whether to appeal to geeks or enterprises. I think patio11 went too far towards the "only appealing to non-geeks" end of the spectrum, partly because he just wanted to show how big of a spectrum there is. It's absolutely possible to have a optimized pricing system, and a well-designed (not talking just visuals) homepage without being anti-geek. For evidence of that just look at Stripe or GitHub. It actually seems like an incredibly rewarding task if cperciva finds the right geek-oriented designer.
- edanm 13y agoGithub is the perfect example. Very "pro-geek". But can you imagine if they had appealed to only people who are comfortable with the command-line and with no GUI's? Github is in many ways just a nice GUI and good documentation on top of git, making it more accessible for the average programmer. And does anyone honestly think the world would be better if git was less widespread?
- opendais 13y agoPerhaps I'm just strange but I wouldn't pay for GitHub and I am the reason that we went with GitLab at $DAY_JOB since its my responsibility to maintain everything Git. The majority of my coworkers are GitHub's target audience [programmers that do not really want to truly understand how Git works] and they have no active desire to use GitHub. I'm literally the only person that works here with a GitHub account which I barely use because I run a private instance of GitLab instead. So, while it is a perfect 'mainstream' example, in your eyes...it is also a prime example that there is a significant market that wouldn't use GitHub professionally.
- solutionyogi 13y agoThank you for eloquently saying what I wanted to say. It is not about the money. I can guess that his original motivation for creating Tarsnap was to create the most secure backup solution for people who care about their data. The natural progression to this goal would be to let more and more people know about this solution and get them to use it so that data is protected. Imagine this contrived scenario. Think about all the hospitals storing important health records for patients. Currently, they are not using Tarsnap not because it is technically lacking, but lacking 'business-y' things which are important. What if Colin's hospital mismanages their backup and all records become available to the public. The irony is that the Colin has solved the hard problem (technical solution) but doesn't want to address the easy problem (business requirements). I sincerely wish Colin would implement these suggestions. I am seriously thinking of asking to collaborate with him and letting me re-brand Tarsnap and create a backup solution which businesses could buy.