Hi, 16.07.2007 22:19,, Francisco Rodrigo Cortinas Maseda wrote:: > > Hello, > > im a new user of the bacula software. Im a member of the systems > engineering department of a telco operator on Europe, and my first > encounter with this software was related to an implementation of an > automatic backup software for all the systems that we are in chrge of. I > found it on specialized forums, and decided to try it on a lab. This was > one of the best decisions that i have made.
Always good to hear :-) > First i want to say that is an impressive software. In the version we > have tried (not the latest) it nearly do as much things as a corporate > will want to do to remain on the market..... and for free. > > The second is that one of the things that move me to develop a lab to > test this software is that it was free of charge, a thing that most of > their "competitors" dont. It was a mayor point, because one of the most > important thing of a company is to reduce the costs related to maintenance. Sure... I don't think anybody here has a problem with that. > I understand you when you say that you need funding to make the project > go on, but im a bit dissapointed with the fact that you will want us to > pay for the use of the software. Ill explain: > > - What we understand with open software is that it is open, that is, > anybody willing to use it can use it. It will remain to be so. > - In the fact that you need funding, the right way is to ask for > "donations". This will remain valid as long as the project remains "small". As far as I know, that approach has not worked. Had Kern relied on donations, Bacula would still be only a concept on a few sheets of paper. > - The case you have is that you do a lot of work to provide binaries, > and people does not "donate" the amount you need to support the project. > System operating licenses are not free..... Hmm... I disagree. There are free operating systems, and there are distributions of (otherwise) free operating systems where you pay a fee. Think RH, SuSE, Sun and others. The point is, in these cases you don't actually pay to (only) use the operating system. You pay for someone pre-packaging software, verifying interoperability, producing user-frindly administrative tools, and so on. Finally, you get support of a reasonably, verifiable quality, and you know whom to strangle if things break. The basic OS is still free and open source. Even regarding purely commercial operating systems, there's some reason to assume that you don't simply pay for the license to use the system - usually, there's some support included, and I (or rather, some of my customers) really like paying for support that is available when needed and definitely knows what to do when things don't run as they should. (Not that I do *NOT* want to discuss the quality of support or the price tags for it from any company here :-) > - Other thing is that the binaries you support are not to all the OSs > that people use out there, that is, i think that almost everybody will > compile their own binaries (except for windows, i thin) for their oss. I'm not so sure there... I know many administrators who really prefer using the packages the projects supply because when they upgrade or reinstall that's much easier than compiling yourself. > Personally, we use AIX and HPUX (and others...), oss that you dont > provide a binarie for them. True, but you're probably part of a minority there... linux, FreeBSD and Sun seem to be the most often used OSes I get in contact with, as far as Bacula servers (i.e., DIR and SD) are concerned. > From the point of view of the customer, if you want users like me (im > not a user now, but we are planning to use your software) to pay for the > use of the software, one of the major thing that move us to use the > software (the fact that is free) will go away, It won't go away... you will still be able to get the source, compile and install to your needs. You might even find that your OS distribution includes Bacula packages (well, unlikely regarding AIX and HPUX, I admit, but still possible). But, and that's the more important point for a corporation, the upcoming Bacula company will not be responsible for these packages, and they will (or should - I'm not sure :-) not support you in case of problems. Another note: I'm quite sure the free mailing list support will not suffer much once the company exists. Rather, I suspect that, in some difficult cases, there will be an advaced option of "go ask the company if you really need that problem fixed which we can't understand or reproduce". > and there are other > commercial software that do the same that your software do, and have > much more experience doing marketing of their products. That remains to be seen... and, actually, I don't think that Kern aims at maximum marketing or maximizing the market share of Bacula. Instead I assume that, especially at the beginning of the company, the goal will be to find high-quality customers that are expecting high grade support for high fees, or want distinct features implemented and are willing to pay for that, so they can replace purely commercial backup software. Many of the current users of Bacula fall in neither of these categories, and these wouldn't lose anything. The others would gain something. > > What i want to say is that if you want to, please put a fee on the > support of the software, that is, online fixing problems, answering > customer questions, etc, not on the use of it. Im glad to say that im > willing you to grow up this company, and give us support on the future > releases of the tool, but at a reasonable fee......:). Well, fee is market and that is, by definition, always reasonable ;-) (PLEASE don't read over that simley... that is NOT exactly my personal belief!) Anyway, let me take your company as an example. If you wanted commercial support, you could get it even now (from me, for example). Obviously, I think my rates are reasonable, but we could discuss that :-) If some problem went beyond my capabilities, today that would be a problem between you and me. Later, I could pull in the Bacula company and, even if that might cost my money, chances would probably be better that we could fix your problem. So you could still use me, a small company with reasonable fees, and still be sure that there's some first class commercial support in the background in case you ever need it. Today, you'd have to believe that my konnection to the project is good enough, but later, you could be sure to get the best technical support available (assuming the developers are best suited for problem solving, which might not always be true...) > Again, its an impressive software. Again, yes. And I don't think you need to be afraid of losing a high-quality and reasonable-cost backup alternative. Arno > Regards. -- Arno Lehmann IT-Service Lehmann www.its-lehmann.de ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by DB2 Express Download DB2 Express C - the FREE version of DB2 express and take control of your XML. No limits. Just data. Click to get it now. http://sourceforge.net/powerbar/db2/ _______________________________________________ Bacula-devel mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bacula-devel
