“Ted Cook is the CEO of Enhanced Software Technologies, the
creators of the BRU backup and software utility available for Linux
and Unix platforms. BRU is one of the first commercial software
applications for Linux….“
“Has EST ever considered making BRU open source?”
“Ted Cook: We have considered that. We’ve developed our CRU
crash recovery utility for Linux and we released that as an open
source product last summer.”
“Under which license was that?”
“Ted Cook: Under the QPL. We’ve had some great input from the
community in terms of them working with us to improve CRU. CRU is
specifically designed to work with BRU, but thanks to open source,
it can be easily modified to work with whatever backup engine you’d
like to work with.”
“We have considered the possibility of opening up the source
code to BRU in various respects. We haven’t come to any final
determination regarding that as of this time.”
“That would involve a significant change of the business model
of any company.”
“Ted Cook: Absolutely. And the thing is, backup software, while
one of the most necessary pieces for most enterprises, is certainly
not the most glamorous part of the industry. One of the factors of
determining whether it makes sense to open up the source code is
whether or not a significant developer community will develop
around it and contribute to it as time goes on. And that’s
something we’re looking into.”