
Today is World Backup Day - pinwale
http://www.worldbackupday.com?2013
======
pytrin
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>

~~~
rikacomet
hmm, though I question, who decided that is a the world backup day, its still
is clear that it doesn't matter much, just like many other XYZ days that I
don't follow.

But I don't see the need of legal actions around such a thing.

~~~
pinwale
It was an idea from a reddit thread. I getting hammered in this thread, and I
don't if anyone can see this. but the Backupify thing was a misunderstanding.
It's okay to use World Backup Day!

I had some trouble with scammy companies and I wanted to protect people from
thinking we were endorsing them. That's all

~~~
pytrin
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.

~~~
pinwale
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 their computer because they downloaded
something that seemed to be endorsed us (fyi, we don't endorse anyone). That's
all.

~~~
pytrin
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).

~~~
pinwale
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. :(

~~~
jlgaddis
So which non-profit are you donating the sponsorship fees to?

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robmay
Backupify didn't take the post down for legal reasons. We took it down because
I talked to the founder of World Backup Day and he explained it was all a
misunderstanding.

As a tech company CEO who has to deal a lot with lawyers, I'm not surprised
this happened. Most of us in tech view lawyers as a necessary evil to be used
sparingly. Lawyers often view themselves as protectors of original ideas. They
often don't understand the social structure in which most techies operate.

So, I'm sure as a 20 something college student who hasn't experienced this
yet, you lean on authority. If you have a bad experience with the first World
Backup Day and someone tells you lawyers can prevent that, then you go and
find a lawyer. The right thing to do would have been to use the community to
police it and point out the scammers, but it's hard to understand the dynamics
of these interactions until you have been through them.

Let me just say that Backupify supports World Backup Day, and intends to be a
sponsor sometime in the future. We are on good terms with the founder, and I
think his attorney was just a bit overzealous with enforcement.

My expectation and understanding of the future is that World Backup Day will
belong to the community, and anyone will be able to discuss it, but to be a
formal sponsor and be listed on the WBD site will be a paid option. I think
that sounds fine.

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huhtenberg
Waaaay too commercialized.

It's like as if Pi day was brought to you by Wolfram Mathematica with a
sprinkle of MatLab coupons.

(edit) MathLab -> MatLab

~~~
caissy
Wait a minute, didn't it start out of a Reddit thread a couple of years ago?

~~~
gav
It did. Now a company called 614a ltd claim they have the legal rights to the
name and collect money from sponsors for it.

~~~
pinwale
Umm...it's just a legal vehicle for my projects. I'm just a student. (fyi,
it's the area code for Columbus!)

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derekp7
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.

~~~
roryokane
Link: <https://github.com/derekp7/snebu>

~~~
derekp7
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.

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t0
Is it worth buying a few extra terabytes to backup? I simply don't have enough
free space to even begin backing anything up.

~~~
ValentineC
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).

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

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lquist
Fitting that this comes a day before April Fool's

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davidw
At least here in Italy, it seems to be more about 'restore' than backup.

~~~
deeths
To point out the old adage: "Amateurs backup. Pros recover." While backup day
is a great reminder for folks, "make sure your backup can actually recover"
day seems like the one more people would benefit from.

