Assessment of the iteration that is ending

The goal for the iteration that has just ended was:

When this iteration is over, I can start suggesting to others that they might try Obnam as a secondary backup solution for personal use.

That goal was reached. I released Obnam2 v0.2.2 at the end of the iteration.

Discussion

There was some useful, highly valuable feedback regarding encryption and security in Obnam, such as issues obnam#61, obnam#62, obnam#63, and obnam#64. These are valid points, but also require me to learn several new things, and do quite a lot of work to solve. This is too much for one iteration, which prompts me to think about goal-setting and how to pace myself.

Having discussed this with myself, and affected by a similar discussion for Subplot goal-setting, I'm going to set three goals for my Obnam development work: one for the current iteration, another for the next several iterations, and one for version 1.0. In order to be clear for others, I won't invent special terminology to refer to them.

The idea is that the goal for one iteration supports the goal for the next few iterations, as well as addressing more immediate needs, such as fixing bugs in the previous release.

I will review and rethink all goals every iteration.

Goals

Goal for 1.0

The goal for version 1.0 is for Obnam to be an utterly boring backup solution for Linux command line users. It should just work, be performant, secure, and well-documented.

It is not a goal for version 1.0 to have been ported to other operating systems, but if there are volunteers to do that, and to commit to supporting their port, ports will be welcome.

Other user interfaces is likely to happen only after 1.0.

The server component will support multiple clients in a way that doesn't let them see each other's data. It is not a goal for clients to be able to share data, even if the clients trust each other.

Goal for the next few iterations

The goal for next few iterations is to have Obnam support encryption well. This will involve having a documented threat model, which has been reviewed by all stakeholders participating in the project, and Obnam defending against all the modeled threats.

This iteration

By the end of this iteration, Obnam will have a first draft of a the simplest threat model that is still useful, and documentation for its architecture and implementation to support evolution of the threat model in future iterations.

A new release will be made at the end of the iteration.

Tasks for this iteration

For this iteration, I'm committed to resolving the following issues: obnam#12, obnam#25, obnam#27, obnam#34, obnam#43, obnam#44, obnam#54, obnam#55, obnam#58, obnam#60, obnam#65, obnam#66.

Total of 14 hours, rough estimate, with each issue estimated at one hour, except obnam#65 at four hours.

Created milestone 4 for this iteration.