[Bacula-devel] Bacula User Survey

[Kern S. <ke...@si...>]

Hello,

On 1 Jan 2011, I sent a Bacula Status report with a request for your feedback 
by filling out a survey.

 For those of you who have responded: many thanks.  For those of you who have 
not responded, the survey will remain open until the end of the month, and it 
gives you a good opportunity to communicate directly with me about some 
important topics.   To fill out the survey, just go to the following link:

   http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/5CXJ7S3

The survey allow you to enter virtually any text you want to make your 
comments, and it is all completely anonymous.

I thought you might like a bit of feedback on the results so far (more after 
the survey is complete).

1. I was surprised how many of you appreciate the need for commercial support 
by Bacula Systems.  No one (so far) has responded that Bacula Systems is not 
at all important to the project.

2. I have purposely refrained from discussing Bacula Systems too much on this 
list, because this is a community list, and I would not like to bother you 
about the commercial aspects of Bacula.  However, I did receive a few 
comments such as the following one:

    I realise that Bacula Systems is a necessary evil but at times I feel that
   3rd party contibutors may be put off because lots of planing seems to be
   done by Bacula systems. In practice I don't think there is a problem but
   just lurking on the -devel list makes it sound like that.

or others that said that they wanted to know what exactly is in the Enterprise 
edition compared to the Community version.  At least one person believes that 
the Bacula Systems plans are secret.

Answer:
Yes, I can understand those concerns.  Bacula Systems plans are not secret, it 
is just that I haven't announced them on this list.  We openly discussed them 
in the Bacula Developer's conference and will do so in the next conference as 
well.  Since most people seem to want to hear more about Bacula Systems, I 
will begin including something on it in the next status report (generally 
quarterly).

3. One person requested that we stop putting features in the Enterprise 
version that are not in the Community version.

Answer:
As of the current Enterprise release (4.0.4) there are NO features in the 
Enterprise release that are not in the Community release (this will change 
over time, see below...).  Our initial concept was to have full open source 
and to make the source of the Enterprise available to everyone.  
Unfortunately, with that fully open source strategy the first two years of 
Bacula Systems generated losses.  We have realized that we must differentiate 
the Enterprise version and the Community version.  Most Open Source companies 
do this by becoming Open Core companies.  That is they have a free Community 
version and a proprietary commercial version with more features.  Our new 
strategy is to remain fully Open Source, but to differentiate, as other 
companies do, what is Enterprise and what is Community.  Thus, a certain part 
of the new development that Bacula Systems undertakes will be Open Source for 
the Community version and another part will be Open Source for the Enterprise 
version.  This strategy seems to be working.  In many ways, we differentiate 
like Open Core companies, but remain full Open Source.  

To complete the answer, today, Bacula Systems is putting some new features 
into the Enterprise version (mostly plugins) that will not immediately be 
available in the Community.  Those new plugins (Windows related) are 
currently in beta test, and most of such features (such as Oracle plugins, 
SAP plugins, NDMP, ...) are high end features needed by companies but not 
very useful to most community members.

All bugs that we fix are fixed in both the Community and the Enterprise 
versions, and I expect that over time many of the Enterprise features will 
become available in the Community version.

For now I'll stop there, but there are many other interesting subjects.  I do 
encourage you to fill out the survey, because it is an excellent way to let 
us know what you are thinking.


    http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/5CXJ7S3
   

Best regards,

Kern