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It's great. Launch it now and fix it up later. ;) Seriously: I was attempting to evangelize tarsnap to my company the other day (despite the fact that I have y

It's great. Launch it now and fix it up later. ;) Seriously: I was attempting to evangelize tarsnap to my company the other day (despite the fact that I have yet to actually use the service...) and was hindered by the fact that there was just nothing to link to. This is exactly what I needed last week. Let your first priority be: Launch this right now. A good second priority would probably be to listen to patio11 and tptacek, but I encourage you not to let this distract you from the first priority.

tptacek 17y ago
I need a reason to recommend this, Colin. If you give me one --- and it's not "paranoia" --- I will start recommending it. (I already have, to people like H.D. Moore on Twitter. The HD's of the world is a really small target market).
- cperciva 17y ago
  I need a reason to recommend this, Colin. Ok, I don't know why you, of all people, don't consider security to be a valid reason for using tarsnap; but if you don't like that, how about * Tarsnap's snapshotting model of backups is very efficient (equal to or better than incremental backups) while providing the flexibility of having archives behave as if they're completely independent of each other. * Tarsnap is priced based on actual usage, so if you don't have much data to store, it can be incredibly cheap. * Tarsnap is written by someone with the expertise required, and who is willing to take the time necessary, to get things right. That last, of course, is relevant to security; but it's also relevant to simple robustness, too.
  - deleted 17y ago
    [deleted]
  - tptacek 17y ago
    Security could be a great reason to use tarsnap. But you still need to advocate for it in terms that your audience will understand. We still have to convince large financials to get critical, Internet-exposed code audited. What hope do you have that I'll just automatically see how much better this is than Mozy?
    - cperciva 17y ago
      What hope do you have that I'll just automatically see how much better this is than Mozy? I don't have much hope that anyone will automatically see anything. This is why I go out of my way to educate -- explaining things like why simple code is less likely to have security flaws, pointing out my expertise and experience, and demonstrating that I'm not afraid to have people look at the tarsnap source code.
      - tptacek 17y ago
        Yeah you're screwed. Come up with another strategy. My clients are the top N% of security professionals (they're managing source code audits), and I'll bet you $5 they think Mozy security is comparable to yours. There's a reason you designed tarsnap the way you did. It's not a little bit different from Mozy. It's a totally different model. Explain how in simple terms. And remember even if your beachhead market is sysadmins, most sysadmins don't code. Don't talk down to them, but don't make your value proposition be about code.

tptacek 17y ago

I need a reason to recommend this, Colin. If you give me one --- and it's not "paranoia" --- I will start recommending it. (I already have, to people like H.D. Moore on Twitter. The HD's of the world is a really small target market).

cperciva 17y ago
I need a reason to recommend this, Colin. Ok, I don't know why you, of all people, don't consider security to be a valid reason for using tarsnap; but if you don't like that, how about * Tarsnap's snapshotting model of backups is very efficient (equal to or better than incremental backups) while providing the flexibility of having archives behave as if they're completely independent of each other. * Tarsnap is priced based on actual usage, so if you don't have much data to store, it can be incredibly cheap. * Tarsnap is written by someone with the expertise required, and who is willing to take the time necessary, to get things right. That last, of course, is relevant to security; but it's also relevant to simple robustness, too.
- deleted 17y ago
  [deleted]
- tptacek 17y ago
  Security could be a great reason to use tarsnap. But you still need to advocate for it in terms that your audience will understand. We still have to convince large financials to get critical, Internet-exposed code audited. What hope do you have that I'll just automatically see how much better this is than Mozy?
  - cperciva 17y ago
    What hope do you have that I'll just automatically see how much better this is than Mozy? I don't have much hope that anyone will automatically see anything. This is why I go out of my way to educate -- explaining things like why simple code is less likely to have security flaws, pointing out my expertise and experience, and demonstrating that I'm not afraid to have people look at the tarsnap source code.
    - tptacek 17y ago
      Yeah you're screwed. Come up with another strategy. My clients are the top N% of security professionals (they're managing source code audits), and I'll bet you $5 they think Mozy security is comparable to yours. There's a reason you designed tarsnap the way you did. It's not a little bit different from Mozy. It's a totally different model. Explain how in simple terms. And remember even if your beachhead market is sysadmins, most sysadmins don't code. Don't talk down to them, but don't make your value proposition be about code.