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
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