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Today is World Backup Day

worldbackupday.com

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Re: Today is World Backup Day

#31

Post by pytrin »

pinwale wrote: post #30
pytrin wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure what the misunderstanding is. Didn't you issue a trademark on a community created idea and then hire a lawyer to enforce it? even if that lawyer made moves not authorized directly by you, this whole incident has a bad taste to it.

It was just supposed to be monitoring for some scammy companies and she got overzealous and sent a letter to Backupify (they are awesome and definitely not scammy). The lawyer said the best way to stop scammy companies would be to trademark it, I'm just a college student so I (unwisely) let them take care of it. Plus it was just an unnecessarily scary letter-not an legal action. I just didn't want people to mess up t…

The original post said that they contacted you through the site you put up, and that you requested sponsorship ranging between $40k and $400k to be associated with this "holiday". That doesn't sound like you were just trying to protect public interest (which is not clear why you would think it is you who should say who can use that name or not).

Re: Today is World Backup Day

#32

Post by rikacomet »

pytrin wrote: post #31
pinwale wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was just supposed to be monitoring for some scammy companies and she got overzealous and sent a letter to Backupify (they are awesome and definitely not scammy). The lawyer said the best way to stop scammy companies would be to trademark it, I'm just a college student so I (unwisely) let them take care of it. Plus it was just an unnecessarily scary letter-not an legal action. I just didn't want people to mess up t…

The original post said that they contacted you through the site you put up, and that you requested sponsorship ranging between $40k and $400k to be associated with this "holiday". That doesn't sound like you were just trying to protect public interest (which is not clear why you would think it is you who should say who can use that name or not).

from the sound of it, it is over, gone in the past. Mistakes happen, lets not publicly rip his clothes (lol). Sounds like he is sorry and its over. I hope so at least.

Re: Today is World Backup Day

#33

Post by varikin »

ValentineC wrote: post #24
t0 wrote: post #2

Is it worth buying a few extra terabytes to backup? I simply don't have enough free space to even begin backing anything up.

I use CrashPlan, though there were some issues when I tried to restore deleted files (my fault, really). They offer a 30-day trial. If you try it, like it enough and are willing to wait, they often have promotions for the first year (for Black Friday last year, it was a tiered discount depending on how early you signed up).

There is a promotion for World Backup Day as well (or Reddit?) 40% off. http://www.crashplan.com/backupreddit

Re: Today is World Backup Day

#34

Post by gav »

pinwale wrote: post #20
kemayo wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd imagine that you're suffering because the community in general is a bit skeptical about trademark enforcement issues, and the pump was primed with that Backupify snafu.

I just wanted to protect my visitors. Companies wouldn't listen to me when they found out I was student. I hope everyone understands that. I'm just a guy in [redacted] who wanted to do something for the community. The designer/coder is just a kid who graduated from highschool. I want people to think our their data. Not to be the center of things. :(

The reason is that people are mad at you is that you took something that was an impromptu community thing and trademarked it[1], then seemingly ask a lot of money for sponsorship. Given that the site exists for promotion only, people are going to think you've co-opted the ideas of others to make a lot of money for yourself.

The "right" way to have done this would be to form a non-profit and then be accountable for the money raised, however I don't really see the need for raising money where the only cost is a simple website. The commercialization is what leaves a bad taste.

[1] http://tess2.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=4001:dn...

Re: Today is World Backup Day

#35

Post by derekp7 »

roryokane wrote: post #26
derekp7 wrote: post #22

I wonder if this would be a good time to mention that I think I've got my new open-source snapshot backup tool (up on Github) ready for a larger testing audience? I'm a bit nervous about promoting it too widely until I'm sure that it is stable enough, but if anyone wants to test it in a non-critical setup, I'd appreciate any feedback.

Link: https://github.com/derekp7/snebu

Thanks, I always forget to post the link. I've also got a Github page at www.snebu.com (this is mostly the Github auto generated web page based on the readme, with a Google Analytics stub in it so I can see if anyone is downloading it).

Just to give a bit more information, I started off with using the rsync/snapshot method (rsync to a remote drive, then cp -al to create hard links into a snapshot directory). But I didn't like that the clients needed to have root access to the backup server (yes I could resolve most of that through fancy ssh authorized_keys file scripting). Also I needed compression (was using ZFS with compression originally). So I designed "snebu" (simple network backup utility) to store compressed files on the backup server similar to how Git stores objects (using the sha1 checksum to name the files), and I keep all the metadata in an Sqlite database. That way, I have the simplicity of something like rsync, but with some of the features of the heavy-weight backup programs (like Bacula, Amanda, etc) but with a slightly easier setup.

I'm in the middle of re-writing the documentation, so I'm sort of looking for feedback on if the current docs don't quite explain things good enough.

Thanks.

Re: Today is World Backup Day

#36

Post by [deleted] »

pytrin wrote: post #10

The legal issues behind this were posted here a few days ago - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5449226 The original blog post was removed (for legal reasons?), here is the cached version of it - http://goo.gl/E1gKN

[deleted]

Re: Today is World Backup Day

#37

Post by pinwale »

pytrin wrote: post #31
pinwale wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was just supposed to be monitoring for some scammy companies and she got overzealous and sent a letter to Backupify (they are awesome and definitely not scammy). The lawyer said the best way to stop scammy companies would be to trademark it, I'm just a college student so I (unwisely) let them take care of it. Plus it was just an unnecessarily scary letter-not an legal action. I just didn't want people to mess up t…

The original post said that they contacted you through the site you put up, and that you requested sponsorship ranging between $40k and $400k to be associated with this "holiday". That doesn't sound like you were just trying to protect public interest (which is not clear why you would think it is you who should say who can use that name or not).

That was some proposed advertising packages on reddit plus a couple other things-I didn't handle the advertising. I'm really tired and sorry.

I just wanted want a nice event for everyone. :(

Re: Today is World Backup Day

#38

Post by ComputerGuru »

aw3c2 wrote: post #27
t0 wrote: post #2

Is it worth buying a few extra terabytes to backup? I simply don't have enough free space to even begin backing anything up.

Imagine losing all your data and thinking "dammit, I would give X of money to get my data back". Find X and decide for yourself.

Not even remotely correct.

I crash my 100k dollar car, and I think, damn, I'd give 100k to get it back. But when insuring it, I don't pay 100k for insurance! You have to take value x probability of loss to arrive at your X.

Re: Today is World Backup Day

#39

Post by DanBC »

t0 wrote: post #2

Is it worth buying a few extra terabytes to backup? I simply don't have enough free space to even begin backing anything up.

Some stuff is more important than others.

You really need to sort out something for passwords; software registrations; and logins. This is a tiny bit of backup, but it'll make life easier if your drive dies.

Re: Today is World Backup Day

#40

Post by pinwale »

gav wrote: post #34
pinwale wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just wanted to protect my visitors. Companies wouldn't listen to me when they found out I was student. I hope everyone understands that. I'm just a guy in [redacted] who wanted to do something for the community. The designer/coder is just a kid who graduated from highschool. I want people to think our their data. Not to be the center of things. :(

The reason is that people are mad at you is that you took something that was an impromptu community thing and trademarked it[1], then seemingly ask a lot of money for sponsorship. Given that the site exists for promotion only, people are going to think you've co-opted the ideas of others to make a lot of money for yourself. The "right" way to have done this would be to form a non-profit and then be accountable for th…

I'm really sorry about everything, but I do want to say the virtually all of the work and promotion was done by me and my friend in the beginning three years ago. (I'm hesitant to bring my friend's name in this thread even though he is an awesome designer/dev who just graduated from highschool and deserves to be recognized. Email me if you like his stuff!)

I learned my lesson. I don't know too much about legal stuff so I'll look into making non-profit. I didn't want to ask for money from people and companies were asking for sponsor World Backup Day. I thought was a nice gesture. Last year, I had a link to bone marrow registry and even had tied the message of being a "backup for a human" to get people to sign up for the registry. I wanted to do something this year, but we ran out of time to settle & create graphics for another cause.

I just wanted it to be a happy and helpful event before April Fool's Day. That is all.

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