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What I would do if I ran Tarsnap (2014)

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Re: What I would do if I ran Tarsnap (2014)

#21

Post by throwaway290 »

ugjka wrote: post #16
pakitan wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At that pricing, if you need to backup less than 25GB compressed data, Hetzner is more expensive than the "ripoff".

Good thinking there pal, but you are missing the point. If I wanted to store 25GB i could probably find a spot that'd do it for free (Mega, Google Drive etc)

If you need free space to store something this is so not for you buddy... Just go register 10 google accounts to spread your stuff around and you never need to pay for storage;) some people like to be a customer not a product

Re: What I would do if I ran Tarsnap (2014)

#22

Post by isawczuk »

This is the problem with outside consultants. They completely miss the point.

Tarsnap is perfect tool for geek2geek backup.

If you position yourself in a new category you get crushed by big companies with lots of money, marketing teams, etc.

Not only that, you will become miserable because you compromise yourself for money. Not everyone wants to build multimillion company.

Re: What I would do if I ran Tarsnap (2014)

#23

Post by pushcx »

Billing is why tarsnap was too unreliable for prod usage for me. You deposit funds with a credit card, a difficult-to-predict usage calculation occurs based on how many deduplicated blocks of new data and how many API calls you will use in the next few weeks and months, and then eventually, at an essentially random time, you get an email from tarsnap guessing you have about a week of funds left and warning that your data will be deleted a week after that happens. Then a human with admin backup credentials and the org’s credit card in hand must log into the tarsnap website to add funds, resetting the time bomb for another few weeks or months.

Tarsnap is technically impressive and was reliable software, but the billing system requires an unpredictable manual process requiring two credentials held separately in most orgs. Colin has told me in private email that customer deletion is a manual step not taken lightly, but I didn’t feel that one unscheduled manual process was fixed by epicycling on another one.

I migrated away several prod installs to pay more for predictable and automated billing. Even with usage billing that’s not easy to predict, the date of next intervention is printed on the back of the credit card. (Though really, it does cost less - the engineer time it takes to manually add funds costs significantly more than a picodollar.)

Re: What I would do if I ran Tarsnap (2014)

#24

Post by edanm »

mananaysiempre wrote: post #4

> We’ll keep prosumer entry points around mainly because I think Colin will go nuclear if I suggest otherwise So that kind of thinking is why every second thing I’d like to hobby-use is priced as a free trial with one missing crucial feature, then $300/mo. It might be rational even, but I’d expect the actual utility does have a negative term for I’m going to hate your service with a fiery passion (and probably also y…

> So that kind of thinking is why every second thing I’d like to hobby-use is priced as a free trial with one missing crucial feature, then $300/mo.

You seem to be under the impression that if people didn't charge so much money, you'd have stuff cheaper. That's not true - what would actually happen is you'd just have less stuff, because people wouldn't build them in the first place.

If someone can afford to create software and run it while charging far less than it's worth for your benefit, then wonderful, but it boggles my mind that you somehow think people owe you this service. Do you also expect people to go into their office and tell their boss "actually, I don't need such a high salary, go ahead and lower it"?

> That’s basically the definition of a discriminating monopolist and what gets you airline-style inscrutable pricing and the SSO tax, isn’t it?

You think it's discrimination to ask people who use more of a service to pay more? You think if an enterprise is using something for business purposes it's not ok to ask them to pay more for something than if a user is using it for hobby purposes?

> If you’ve put it in writing and not planning to sue over violations, you’re lying to me.

That seems both unworkable and kind of ridiculous. You're basically advocating for a "zero context" policy around contracts, in which people don't have any choice whether to sue someone. Even if it's a minor violation that isn't worth it to sue over, or a violation that they decide is ok for them in that context. Why would that be better than the alternative?

Re: What I would do if I ran Tarsnap (2014)

#25

Post by ugjka »

throwaway290 wrote: post #21
ugjka wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good thinking there pal, but you are missing the point. If I wanted to store 25GB i could probably find a spot that'd do it for free (Mega, Google Drive etc)

If you need free space to store something this is so not for you buddy... Just go register 10 google accounts to spread your stuff around and you never need to pay for storage;) some people like to be a customer not a product

my point it is overpriced no matter how you look at it

Re: What I would do if I ran Tarsnap (2014)

#26

Post by rcxdude »

wofo wrote: post #13

Interesting timing... A few weeks ago I evaluated using tarsnap for my business and ended up going for borg + rsync.net, for some of the reasons pointed out in the post. It seemed like the more "professional" option (the website was clearer and the service didn't require me to top-up at irregular intervals). I guess I'm not the intended audience of tarsnap.

I would characterise rsync.net as aiming at a similar market segment. Both of them have a big "by geeks, for geeks" vibe (rsync.net even has a page designed to be sent to your boss if you're recommending it at work), in fact in some ways rsync.net is even more barebones: they don't even provide their own backup utility, it's basically just an SSH login to a ZFS volume. But it is a lot cheaper, it has some unique features like supporting raw ZFS send, and it has the alert-if-your-backup-stops-running feature that tarsnap apparently lacks, as well as the generally friendlier billing approach you mention.

Re: What I would do if I ran Tarsnap (2014)

#27

Post by zvorygin »

mananaysiempre wrote: post #4

> We’ll keep prosumer entry points around mainly because I think Colin will go nuclear if I suggest otherwise So that kind of thinking is why every second thing I’d like to hobby-use is priced as a free trial with one missing crucial feature, then $300/mo. It might be rational even, but I’d expect the actual utility does have a negative term for I’m going to hate your service with a fiery passion (and probably also y…

As someone who flies a lot on his own dime, inscrutable airline pricing ends up being good.

It means I can always get a seat, I just have to pay more. It means businesses subsidize mine and everyone else’s flights.

When I’m travelling the world and have to use a train system with fixed prices, I don’t like that I have to book many days in advance or else the tickets are sold out. Just raise the price! Let the rich pay double so it’s cheaper for everyone else, and anyone who _really needs_ to use the service can weigh the costs and decide to pay more.

Re: What I would do if I ran Tarsnap (2014)

#28

Post by jacquesm »

peteforde wrote: post #11
jacquesm wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Advice is worth what you paid for it and even if you solicit advice you are not required to take it, especially if taking that advice implies you have to do stuff that runs counter to your nature and views. Patrick's advice is very good: for Patrick. But for Colin it was more of an exercise in how you could run Tarsnap, not how he should run Tarsnap. Meanwhile, Tarsnap is still in business many years later, has happy…

All fair points, and Patrick acknowledged this at the time - and in the previous HN thread back in 2014. I remember it was a good one. The detail that really pets me backwards is the whole "if you're here, you already know what this is for and how to use it" vibe. It's not just Tarsnap; many aspects of the OSS world uphold this most unfortunate tradition. I believe with all of my heart that it is unnecessarily hostil…

It matters to you because you care about seeing things succeed according to your definition of success but consider that there are different kinds of people some of which are more than happy to present their works in such a way that it doesn't turn into a runaway marketing machine but presents itself more like you would look at a utility. I have a project like that myself in the works and if it ever starts to take on a life of its own beyond where I'm having fun with it and it is just useful to others I will have to make a very hard choice: transform it into an actual business or to hobble it in such a way that it won't take off (or possibly even to shut it down). Which of those two it will be I can't tell you but in the meantime I've done what I could do to ensure that no matter what I choose users of the service will have perfect data portability with a local installation.

Founders that are in the funding cycle would obviously benefit from Patrick's advice they are going to increase their chances at commercial success that way. But if commercial success isn't your #1 goal there are other viable paths based on your priorities in life. And that's a hill that I'd die on if necessary because I don't believe that everything has to be run as a marketing driven profit maximization engine. The OSS world upholds that tradition pretty good and I'm fully supportive of it, there are many paths to a happy life and not all of them run through a wallet.

Re: What I would do if I ran Tarsnap (2014)

#29

Post by vasco »

shubhamjain wrote: post #10

I applaud Colin's (Tarsnap Founder) attitude. Sure it could be priced better. Sure it could make much, much more than it currently does. But I dislike the notion that every software company needs to optimize for the same things. Tarsnap is a service that I am sure makes comfortable amount of money for its founder and has remained faithful to its initial audience. Why does anything other than that matters? Yes, some t…

> It does one thing and does it well

From the posts I've read recently it seems like it does one thing and it does it by renting a single EC2 server that will bring the service down if it needs to reboot, and it does it by reselling S3 at 10x the cost.

It's funny because maybe it's a good service but going by HN, it's not reliable or cost effective.

Re: What I would do if I ran Tarsnap (2014)

#30

Post by nullcipher »

dools wrote: post #17
shubhamjain wrote: post #10

I applaud Colin's (Tarsnap Founder) attitude. Sure it could be priced better. Sure it could make much, much more than it currently does. But I dislike the notion that every software company needs to optimize for the same things. Tarsnap is a service that I am sure makes comfortable amount of money for its founder and has remained faithful to its initial audience. Why does anything other than that matters? Yes, some t…

Except that’s not what being a fisherman is like at all

neither is it like that to be a multi millionaire. rare is the multimillionaire who "retires" to a village and enjoys siesta. usually, they want to move even more money (which is fine).
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