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Would 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 reaction

Would 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 ago
I 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 ago
  Github 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 ago
    Perhaps 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.
    - simonw 13y ago
      Just out of interest, why do you think GitHub's target audience are developers who don't want to truly understand git?
      - recursive 13y ago
        I'm one of them. For me it's because I made some token efforts before to understand it, and it seemed far more complicated than source control should be. I have very simple needs, and correspondingly don't really have a desire to learn non simple tools.
        opendais 13y ago
        And if that works for you, you shouldn't learn it. :) But I think Tarsnap -> Patio11's Idea is like Git -> GitHub. I think there are two separate audiences there with different needs.
      - opendais 13y ago
        Git is as easy to use as scp or rsync from the commandline for most common tasks. So is Tarsnap. The Tarsnap -> Patio11's Idea is being approximated as equivalent to Git -> GitHub. So, in this context, the people I've dealt with that would want Patio11's Idea of Tarsnap are people who don't want to take the effort to understand what they are dealing with. GitHub has a larger audience that has nothing to do with development. Social features, simplifying things for non-developers, etc. but I do not feel that portion of the 'product' is relevant in this context. The people I know IRL that prefer a GitHub-type interface over doing things with Git via the command line are the type that need me to fix the issues they run into for them. The fact I'm basically git support for other IT folk leads me to that conclusion. And frankly, I'm not a Git guru. I'm a very, very average software developer who acts as the sysadmin for Dev at $DAY_JOB. I fully believe other people have different experiences but I've implemented Git workflows at 2 companies now and I've seen a consistent pattern. Please do understand, I'm not saying they should or need to learn Git. It is better they focus on the domain expertise they bring to the table [e.g. Web Design, Email Design, Data Science]. I'm just saying it is a different audience than Tarsnap's current one.
  - jfarmer 13y ago
    100%. Tarsnap is like GitHub if it were priced by picodollars per byte in the repository blob.
- opendais 13y ago
  Perhaps, but realize, that the 'truly paranoid' would not use GitHub's paid offering. They'd have their own private behind the firewalls of an open source product with source code they could examine. At least in my opinion.
  - pwim 13y ago
    GitHub has an enterprise plan where you can run it behind your firewall.
    - opendais 13y ago
      'with source code they could examine' you seemed to have skipped over?
      - schneid 13y ago
        Well, obviously it's not open source, but GH Enterprise is delivered as a running Ruby app, so you can take a look. Of course the TOS says you shouldn't read or reverse engineer or whatever. But I know people fix bugs that GitHub won't fix in their enterprise product by patching the Ruby source after each new update.
  - the_ancient 13y ago
    https://enterprise.github.com/ https://enterprise.github.com/

ianstormtaylor 13y ago

I 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 ago
Github 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 ago
  Perhaps 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.
  - simonw 13y ago
    Just out of interest, why do you think GitHub's target audience are developers who don't want to truly understand git?
    - recursive 13y ago
      I'm one of them. For me it's because I made some token efforts before to understand it, and it seemed far more complicated than source control should be. I have very simple needs, and correspondingly don't really have a desire to learn non simple tools.
      - opendais 13y ago
        And if that works for you, you shouldn't learn it. :) But I think Tarsnap -> Patio11's Idea is like Git -> GitHub. I think there are two separate audiences there with different needs.
    - opendais 13y ago
      Git is as easy to use as scp or rsync from the commandline for most common tasks. So is Tarsnap. The Tarsnap -> Patio11's Idea is being approximated as equivalent to Git -> GitHub. So, in this context, the people I've dealt with that would want Patio11's Idea of Tarsnap are people who don't want to take the effort to understand what they are dealing with. GitHub has a larger audience that has nothing to do with development. Social features, simplifying things for non-developers, etc. but I do not feel that portion of the 'product' is relevant in this context. The people I know IRL that prefer a GitHub-type interface over doing things with Git via the command line are the type that need me to fix the issues they run into for them. The fact I'm basically git support for other IT folk leads me to that conclusion. And frankly, I'm not a Git guru. I'm a very, very average software developer who acts as the sysadmin for Dev at $DAY_JOB. I fully believe other people have different experiences but I've implemented Git workflows at 2 companies now and I've seen a consistent pattern. Please do understand, I'm not saying they should or need to learn Git. It is better they focus on the domain expertise they bring to the table [e.g. Web Design, Email Design, Data Science]. I'm just saying it is a different audience than Tarsnap's current one.
- jfarmer 13y ago
  100%. Tarsnap is like GitHub if it were priced by picodollars per byte in the repository blob.
opendais 13y ago
Perhaps, but realize, that the 'truly paranoid' would not use GitHub's paid offering. They'd have their own private behind the firewalls of an open source product with source code they could examine. At least in my opinion.
- pwim 13y ago
  GitHub has an enterprise plan where you can run it behind your firewall.
  - opendais 13y ago
    'with source code they could examine' you seemed to have skipped over?
    - schneid 13y ago
      Well, obviously it's not open source, but GH Enterprise is delivered as a running Ruby app, so you can take a look. Of course the TOS says you shouldn't read or reverse engineer or whatever. But I know people fix bugs that GitHub won't fix in their enterprise product by patching the Ruby source after each new update.
- the_ancient 13y ago
  https://enterprise.github.com/ https://enterprise.github.com/