What I Would Do If I Ran Tarsnap

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.

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.