On Mon, 16 Jul 2007, Kern Sibbald wrote: >> I hate to say this, but history shows that it usually leads to a great >> deal of shouting and hatemail from the peanut gallery. >> >> Kern, how many hours/how much cost is involved in validating the Win* >> binaries?
This was actually a genuine question. We don't even use Win* binaries, however knowing what kind of funding is needed to keep the project going makes it somewhat easier to obtain it.... > My take on this is that the Bacula project has been supplying a lot of > binaries (i.e. a lot of work and a service), corporations, Universities, and > governments are saving 10s and even 100s of thousands of dollars in license > fees in using Bacula, and certain of those establishments are becoming rather > vocal about wanting high end features, but they are not willing to spend even > 1 cent of the money they save on license fees to support the project. I think that this will be a good thing and will enable you to obtain funding - quite frankly, if there had been an entity available to provide invoices for support and licensing 5 years ago we would have gladly paid up. Coporates and Universities will not be the ones doing a lot of shouting and screaming. For the most part they will _gladly_ pay for support. The stumbling block up until now has been one of invoicing. As you know MSSL been offering to provide some (limited) funding for features, however the lack of a support structure as you appear to be unveiling has been a major sticking point in getting funding released towards the project - what we've put forward is literally all that's been able to be made available locally without having to get approval from higher powers. Many university and corporate IT departments will easily find themselves in similar situations. Without a legal entity to deal with it is nearly impossible to get approval to spend money (This is why so many companies can make good money selling opensource products...) As I said, what worries me is a large amount of negative publicity from the "peanut gallery". In opensource terms, the "Peanut Gallery" are the _very_ vocal groups of people who scream from the hilltops that all software should be free of charge, etc etc etc. What worries me is extremely strong press and hatemail coming from the likes of SlashDot and similar arenas as a direct reaction to an announcement that Bacula is no longer available in binary form and is moving to commercial support. (For origin, please see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peanut_gallery ) > Any money obtained will be put back into developing Bacula features and paying > a small renumeration to the people who create the binaries. This is A VERY GOOD THING! PS: Kern - My director asks "Please mail us asap for details of what kinds of fee structures are envisaged and how we can be invoiced." PPS: Please review that decision about the binaries. It will generate a lot of unnecessary adverse publicity. Those who want to pay for support are quite likely to be already forming a line. (See the history of Pegasus Mail. Free cost software+Paid support is definitely ecoonomically viable) Thanks Alan ------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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-users mailing list Bacula-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bacula-users
