Friday, November 20, 2009

The best backup

Yesterday I was reading some posts in my aggregator about backup techniques, and they reminded me of a (famous?) quote. Thus, I wanted to share my preferred technique for sofware projects backup.
Only wimps use tape backup: _real_ men just upload their important stuff on ftp, and let the rest of the world mirror it ; -- Linus Torvalds, (1996-07-20). Post to linux.dev.kernel newsgroup.
    I know this is not applicable to every project, but usually open source is full of benefits:
    • if you follow the doctrine (everything not reproducible is kept under version control), there are free services like Google Code and SourceForge which will host the Subversion (or Git) server and care for automatic backup and disaster recovery. This means that if your old hard disk breaks your work is saved up to the last commit.
    • Obviously you can get collaboration and feedback from other developers.
    • It takes minutes to set up a working copy of your project for development and testing as long as you have an Internet connection available: it is globally accessible all over the world.
    There are cloud services for private projects, but they have a cost in money. Open source support is free and competitive today. Every management application you will need is provided and updated by SourceForge: trac, wikis, file release system...
    In general, sharing with the rest of the world your code and your writings is the way to save them from oblivion:
    Some years ago, two programmers at Cisco (the networking-equipment manufacturer) got assigned the job of writing a distributed print-spooling system for use on Cisco's corporate network. [...]
    The duo came up with a clever set of modifications to the standard Unix print-spooler software, plus some wrapper scripts, that did the job. Then they realized that they, and Cisco, had a problem.
    The problem was that neither of them was likely to be at Cisco forever. Eventually, both programmers would be gone, and the software would be unmaintained and begin to rot (that is, to gradually fall out of sync with real-world conditions). No developer likes to see this happen to his or her work, and the intrepid duo felt Cisco had paid for a solution under the not unreasonable expectation that it would outlast their own jobs there.
    Accordingly, they went to their manager and urged him to authorize the release of the print spooler software as open source. Their argument was that Cisco would have no sale value to lose, and much else to gain. By encouraging the growth of a community of users and co-developers spread across many corporations, Cisco could effectively hedge against the loss of the software's original developers. -- Eric S. Raymond, The Magic Cauldron
    What is your opinion on sharing your work as open source?

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