Hello, I have three major topics that I would like to address in this Bacula status report:
1.Bacula Release 3.0 2.Bacula Project Changes 3.Bacula Enterprise 1.0 1. Bacula Release 3.0: Bacula Release 3.0 is now ready. If all goes well, it will be released this week. Anyone who wants to get a head start, can pull a copy from the SVN. This is probably the biggest major release we have ever made, and it was also likely the one that was the longest in preparation. If you would like to get an idea what new features are implemented, please see the feature list at: http://bacula.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/bacula/trunk/bacula/release-3-status.txt?view=markup or the new feature documentation at: http://www.bacula.org/manuals/en/concepts/concepts/New_Features.html I was astonished to realize that some of the new code for 3.0 was written as long ago as October 2007 (plugin code), which means that with this version, the release cycle has become so long that many developers could well be discouraged to have to wait so long to see their work released. Along these lines, I recently re-read Eric Raymond's “The Cathedral and the Bazaar”, with which I am sure many of you are familiar: http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/cathedral-bazaar/ all of which leads into my next subject ... 2. Bacula Project Changes: My tendency has probably been much more toward building a Cathedral (slow, careful, stable) rather than the Bazaar style (rapid changes) in developing Bacula. However, in taking a careful look at other Open Source projects and the Enterprise needs, I believe that the Bacula Community would benefit considerably from a shift to a faster release cycle such as is the case with Linux and many other projects. In addition, the project has been, in effect, maintaining two versions: 1. The production release version (2.4.x) 2. the development version (SVN code) So beginning with the release of version 3.0, we will be shifting the project to a much faster release cycle and in doing so will no longer maintain a parallel production release version (current version 2.4.x). The task of providing a slower moving version of Bacula similar to item 1 above with fewer features than the development version will be picked up by Bacula Systems (see below for more details). As the Bacula developers add new features to the SVN, we will release “early and often” in order to make new the features available quickly, and to allow the community to test and report bugs. In the past, Bacula developers have sometimes had to wait nine months or more to see their contributions included in a release. This faster rhythm (hopefully releases every 3-6 months) will allow the community to benefit from new development earlier, and will help the project to move forward quickly. See "An important note..." below for more on this. 3. Bacula Enterprise 1.0: As most of you know, Bacula Systems is a newly formed company with the objective to work hand in hand with the Bacula project to promote Bacula, and in addition to provide professional support, training, and consulting services, by working through partners, who will work directly with customers on a local level. This company was created because I believe it is the key to ensuring that Bacula can advance rapidly and compete in the Enterprise market while remaining truely Open Source. On the other hand, I believe that support from the Community is key for the survival of Bacula Systems. In mid-April, Bacula Systems will release Bacula Enterprise Edition 1.0, a new branch of the Bacula project, to provide a certified version of Bacula, available with optional professional support and a warranty. We will compile, configure, test and certify binary packages and provide these certified binaries with Bacula Systems Subscriptions. Many organizations using Bacula in production, for backup and recovery of mission critical data, have shown us the need for professional services, service level agreements (SLA’s) and a contractual relationship with a commercial entity. These organizations typically back up 20 or more computers with a variety of operating systems, and use tape libraries and/or sophisticated disk storage strategies. Bacula Systems was founded to meet these needs. Production users often prefer not to change versions often, so after the first couple of releases, we plan one major release per year in this branch. This will give time for more thorough testing, and for our certification process. Of course, critical bug and security fixes will be released rapidly. Bacula Systems subscribers will receive new binaries, avoiding the need to compile the patches. Anything that is done for the Enterprise version will be rapidly feed into the Bacula project version as well. Since Bacula is Open Source code (no hidden proprietary code), the Bacula Enterprise source code will be available to anyone who wants it. This code base will be somewhat similar to the prior project versions such as 2.4.x, but in addition, it will have features backported from the project releases on a regular basis, and funded development features that will also be made availble in the project SVN. An important note… As you might have gathered, the two branches of the Bacula project will be somewhat analogous to Fedora and Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), but with one very important difference. Fedora provides a leading edge version of Linux with a rapid release cycle. This keeps development moving quickly, providing stimulation and recognition to the developers. Red Hat Enterprise Linux provides a more stable version with warranties, professional support and a release cycle better suited to production environments. The RHEL source code is available as no cost version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, albeit with no guaranties, SLA’s or professional support subscriptions. About that important difference I mentioned: Some people (myself included) find that Fedora’s release cycle is so rapid as to sacrifice some measure of stability. The Bacula 3.0 branch will evolve quickly, but we intend to keep it stable enough for production environments. Anyone who participates actively in the Bacula community and who can self support should find Bacula 3.0 suitable for production. The success of Bacula and its ongoing development depends on the vigor of our community. Your support takes many forms: bug reports and suggestions for new features, contributions of code and bug fixes, regression testing, documentation, and answering questions on the user-mail list. Thank you for all this! And, of course we are encouraged and pleased by the many compliments we receive, by your positive posts on many blogs, and by the recommendations you give to others to try Bacula. Please keep it up. Thank you for using Bacula and for supporting it! Sincerely, Kern Sibbald Bacula Project Leader ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ _______________________________________________ Bacula-users mailing list Bacula-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bacula-users
