What I Would Do If I Ran Tarsnap

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.

I wonder what would happen if someone built what was described in the post and used tarsnap as the backend...

Is that even possible? ;)

It 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>

The 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)