Thanks to YOU Kern for bringing such a good open source backup solution to
the community.
And thanks for this status update, it give us more detail on what we
already know ... Bacula project is still alive.
Best regards
Davide
On Nov 25, 2013 5:50 PM, "Kern Sibbald" <k...@sibbald.com> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I would like to speak to you about the following points:
>
> 1. The rumors of the death of Bacula (the Community version)
> 2. The Bareos fork of Bacula
> 3. Bacula Systems and the FSFE (Free Software Foundation Europe)
> 4. The future of Bacula (the Community version)
>
> 1. The rumors of the death of Bacula (the Community version):
>
> I borrow words from a quote of Mark Twain: The rumors of the death
> of Bacula are highly exaggerated!
>
> I began working on Bacula 14 years ago (in January 2000), and it has
> been Open Source from the time it was publicly released in April
> 2002, and it will remain Open Source. I have been and am fully
> devoted to Open Source, and in particular to Bacula, which is like
> my “baby”. So to hear rumors that Bacula is dead or that I have
> withheld commits because they are Enterprise features is shocking
> and hurtful to me as well as not true.
>
> I did inform the Bacula Community several years ago that my personal
> participation in Bacula would decrease a bit for several years to
> allow me to focus more on getting Bacula Systems started. In my
> opinion, that has not been a serious disadvantage for the Bacula
> project since Bacula Systems over that period has contributed far
> more code to Bacula than I could have alone over the same period,
> and as you will see a bit later in this status report, Bacula
> Systems contributions are absolutely guaranteed to continue in the
> long run, and even increase.
>
> 2. The Bareos fork of Bacula:
>
> The Bacula repository has been on “hold” since our last release
> in early February, because on 27 February 2013, I learned that there
> was a fork of Bacula made by a former “consultant” of Bacula
> Systems with a former reseller of Bacula Systems. Unfortunately,
> despite the fact that Bareos hired one of the best German Open
> Source lawyers , there were a number of serious copyright violations
> with their code. Since the Bacula code is copyrighted by the Free
> Software Foundation Europe (FSFE), I provided the technical support,
> and the FSFE worked with Bareos to clean up their copyright
> violations. That took a significant amount of time (many months),
> and the Bareos code though significantly improved is still not
> totally free of copyright infringements. I won't go into the
> details here as all of you may not be interested, but will have much
> more to say about Bareos in later blogs, and when the blog is setup
> I will let you know.
>
> I find Bareos an unusual fork, because it wasn't done in what I
> believe to be the normal Open Source way. Normally a fork is made
> when a project is blocked or has serious disagreements with the
> users. Its also normally done in open communication rather than
> underhanded or in secret. In the case of Bacula, though some of the
> development slowed down (I will go into this in detail later), it
> certainly was by no means stopped. To complain about active
> development in Bacula Systems, is, in my opinion, incorrect first
> because adding features to the Enterprise version costs Bacula
> Systems a lot mostly in salaries yet takes absolutely nothing from
> Bacula. In fact, when you read the next section, you will see that
> the more that Bacula Systems develops, the more features that Bacula
> over time will have. Going back to what I find abnormal about the
> Bareos fork is that they claim that they spent three years
> developing a lot of new features, thus they are more feature rich
> than Bacula. Yes, for the moment, they have a few features that
> Bacula does not yet have, but not for long, and more importantly
> over the three years of development of those features they never
> offered these new features to Bacula nor to any Open Source project.
> Instead they were developed in secret. I find that a very strange
> behavior for a self-proclaimed Open Source company (actually, they
> are “forced” to be Open Source because of the Bacula AGPLv3
> license). So as Bacula contributors and users, you would be within
> your rights to feel very upset with Bareos, because they never
> offered you the code they developed.
>
> I assure that I will do all in my power to ensure that any
> worthwhile features that Bareos implements will be implemented in
> Bacula, and most likely better integrated and more robust, and where
> possible with even more functionality and growth potential.
>
>
> 3. Bacula Systems and the FSFE:
>
> If you have been a long time Bacula user you may recall that I
> discussed the possibility in 2006-2007 of creating a company, now
> called Bacula Systems, to ensure the continuation of Bacula when I
> will no longer be able to personally contribute – say in 10 or 20
> years, as well as to provide the financial means to add high-end
> features to Bacula (a fibre channel network costs about $50K to
> setup). Much to my surprise 95% or more of the responses I got were
> very positive. Bacula Systems was created in July 2008, and for the
> first two years, the Enterprise code base and the Community code
> base were identical. Unfortunately, that didn't work financially
> for Bacula Systems. Companies willing to pay, were willing to pay
> for features and support but not support alone, so Bacula Systems
> embarked on development to continue maintenance and improvement of
> Bacula while at the same time creating mostly plugins to add
> differentiation to the Enterprise version.
>
> Now this may not sound very Open Source to you, and I understand,
> because I feel the same way. Were it at all possible, I would give
> you all of Bacula Systems code, unfortunately, that is not
> economically feasible at the current time, and yet without Bacula
> Systems, I fear the Bacula project will die or worse yet fall into
> the hands of someone incapable of maintaining the high quality we
> have created.
>
> While I was consulting with the Free Software Foundation Europe
> (FSFE) on the Bareos copyright violations, Bacula Systems and I
> began discussions with the FSFE on how to guarantee the long term
> survival of Bacula. These discussions, extremely positive on both
> sides and all points, recently lead to a formal written agreement
> between myself, Bacula Systems, and the FSFE. There are a number of
> points in the agreement, but probably the most important of all is
> that Bacula Systems has now put in writing that it is an Open Source
> company (at its heart), as it has always proclaimed, and will
> contribute all the Enterprise code it creates to the Bacula
> Community code base within at most a 5 year period. One exception
> is that Bacula Systems is legally unable to contribute certain code
> encumbered by third party proprietary license. The 5 year delay
> gives Bacula Systems the chance to develop Enterprise features that
> differentiate it, but ensures the continual growth of the Bacula
> Community code. This model can possibly be used across the industry
> to ensure the future of open source software in an environment where
> development costs, particularly for hardware to do testing, are
> prohibitive to the standard models of today.
>
> 5. The future of Bacula (the Community version):
>
> If you have read section 4 above, hopefully if you were not already
> convinced that Bacula is alive that you can now see that it will
> have a long and successful future ahead of it. If you have any
> doubts, please do not hesitate to either send me an email on the
> bacula-users list or directly to me (if you want it private).
> Hopefully, by mid-December I will have a blog setup (need a major
> upgrade of bacula.org to do so), and I will then fill you in on the
> details of the Bareos fork as well as more details on what next to
> expect in Bacula.
>
> Thank you for contributing to and/or using Bacula ...
>
> Best regards,
> Kern
>
>
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