What I Would Do If I Ran Tarsnap

Or...How I would run an online backup service completely unrelated to Tarsnap, with different goals, different priorities, and different ideals.

Yep, I think this is basically the problem with this post, it's Dropbox with an open source client and maybe that is what he doesn't want it to be.

Honestly, he's put so much thought and effort into it already and seems to care a lot about it, I wonder why he doesn't just launch a competing service.

Edit: Whoa, lots of downvotes. I guess it is a bit odd to ask a person who just said "What I Would Do If I Ran Tarsnap" if they have any literal interest in running Tarsnap. Silly me.

part of the allure of Tarsnap is cperciva's security and engineering expertise. While patio11 is brilliant, that is the one part of the "business" he wouldn't be to compete with.

The whole point is that cperciva has a unique competitive advantage in operating tarsnap in that he's a remarkably good at that problem set.

patio11's whole point is that he loves both tarsnap and cperciva and thinks literally everyone in this equation would be better served if cperciva made more money and by making the tarsnap user experience more sensitive to the needs of businesses who want to rely on it.

Because being on the hook for people's backups is not my idea of a fun time, because I'd be directly competing with an Internet buddy who I'd rather see successful, because I have no particular comparative advantage in backups that I don't have in a host of better product categories, because I already run three businesses and enjoy sleeping occasionally, because running services is in fact a heck of a lot harder than posting about them, etc etc.

Couldn't he just run a marketing site that passes user data directly through to Tarsnap, but charges a 1000% markup for the flashy website?

If you think Tarsnap is Dropbox with an open source client (but marketed differently), a) you do not understand the engineering reality of Tarsnap (or you have a very... curious understanding of Dropbox) and b) Colin, please note that your marketing is creating fans who think that Tarsnap is Dropbox with an open source client.

How about Dropbox + TrueCrypt, except easier to automate and much cheaper beyond Dropbox's free tier, in exchange for taking the risk on a one-person business?

I meant the product described in the blog post not tarsnap as it currently is.

I'm quite aware of what tarsnap is.

I think Patrick's comment still applies if you think he described "Dropbox with an open source client." Since it's still tarsnap, it still retains all of the security benefits of tarsnap. Saying "open source client" does not capture that.

Things tarsnap would need to be anything like dropbox:

* Mobile support

* Windows support

* A web interface

* Any way of using it other than CLI

TFA left all that stuff in place. "tarsnap the software" does not change at all.

You realise that Dropbox isn't a backup system, right?

I have a backup file there, so can confirm it does work for that purpose.

Um, no.

Delete that file on one device, it is gone from all that share it.

Put only a backup copy (not the source file) into Dropbox or Tarsnap. Don't delete the file on either system. Same boat.

Scripts can copy out from the Dropbox to both negate your issue and proliferate backup copies to many physical locations.

Dropbox preserves history of the file even after file was deleted.

Especially with Packrat feature.

https://www.dropbox.com/help/11/en

Didn't know, thanks! Also didn't know that (from Dropbox help) "Your files are stored using 256-bit AES encryption". You have to trust them with the keys though.

You are assuming that Colin did not make a number of different (but similar in spirit) decisions when he set up tarsnap the way he did.

But if you espouse like this on 'what you would do if you ran tarsnap' then you probably should be doing just that, rather than to list your own set of priorities that contradict the whole premise of your well intentioned public good advice.

I read this as a public offer to do better, excuses about how you're too busy shouldn't count. If you're going to tell someone how you would run their business you should be wiling to do exactly that. Otherwise your words lose a lot of strength.

Especially because running services is a lot harder than (publicly) posting about them.

I read the article as an immensely valuable 'Business 101 For Geeks: With Current Case Study' tutorial, and wished I had more than one upvote to give it. Seriously, people pay good money for educational material of far lower quality, and we're getting it free. Demanding that the author take on another business is... an inappropriate response.

Indeed. I have paid and will continue to happily pay significant sums of money for educational material at approximately this detail level, so I'm very very happy that Patrick is willing to do it for free.