What I Would Do If I Ran Tarsnap

What patio11 doesn't get, is that part of the reason why HN crowd considers tarsnap "the best backup software" is exactly because Colin Percival is what patio11 calls "bad at business" (and what I would call "motivated not only by money").

BTW, that is the same reason for the backlash over Oculus acquisition: people are upset that it will no longer be run by "bad at business" engineers like John Carmack, but instead by "very good at business" Mark Zuckerberg.

Exactly. What patio11 calls "Geek to Geek" business and suggests Colin move away from. Any new user who sees the suggested standard three tier pricing scheme is going to immediately recognize a traditional business. And there goes the entire g2g market. Which I suppose patio11 doesn't care about given that he's suggesting a move away from that.

But without g2g, Colin is going to be competing in a huge market with a bunch of other players. He's also likely to enjoy his business a whole lot less.

Right, because geeks never buy services from traditional businesses.

Oh, wait.

>>Colin is going to be competing in a huge market with a bunch of other players. He's also likely to enjoy his business a whole lot less.

Also painfully incorrect. When you have a unique selling proposition, it's easy to compete in a huge market with a bunch of other players. It's also enjoyable.

How "painfully" self-centered. It's not about whether you consider it to be enjoyable or easy. It's about what Colin is likely to experience. And given his past reluctance to listen to similar Tarsnap related business advice thrown his way numerous times over the years, one conclusion we can draw is that he fully understands what the options are and he simply doesn't believe he would enjoy the change. There are other possibilities for his lack of change, but I didn't hear you suggest any.