Looking for some early beta testers

[Madison Kelly]

Hi all,

   After 14 months of working nearly full time on my gpl linux backup 
program it is finally close to 'beta'. What I mean is that all main 
features work with one exception. What I am working on mostly now is 
cleanup. It is far from perfect though, obviously.

   I am posting this in the hopes of finding a few brave souls willing 
to help me do some early beta testing. I am new to this so I don't want 
too many people just yet (though I worry about not getting anyone!) 
until I figure out how to properly handle outside help. To anyone 
willing I would be happy to come to you with my laptop and code for an 
initial demo, overview and/or install.

   What I am looking for in a beta tester:
  - Someone with patience (I am learning project management as I go).
  - Someone with a perl, postgresql and/or javascript background.
  - Someone with a system willing to run relatively stable but 
alpha-class software on.
  - Someone with external USB/Firewire/SCSI disks and possibly a 
background in storage tech
  - Someone with some free time and/or looking for an open-source 
project to pluck away at.
  - Did I mention patience? :p

   What you get out of it:
  - My thanks! (yeah, worth a lot, huh?).
  - Input on a potentially major OSS project (giving myself some credit 
:p ).
  - If this gets off the ground something else for your resume (any 
students interested?).
  - Personal tech support on a very flexible and user-friendly backup 
program.
  - Okay, not much...

   Initial tasks:
  - Testing, testing, testing... stability.
  - Suggestions on new features and methods before a feature freeze.
  - Once the feature freeze is in place, more work on speed and 
stability of features
  - Debugging leading to v0.2, the first official beta
  - I would like to release v0.2 by the end  of July or August.


   To be honest, asking for help makes me quite nervous... I still feel 
like so much should be done before I ask for outside help. In the end 
though, with the exception of one bit I mentioned, the program really is 
about as far along as I can expect it to be. It works now, inevitable 
bugs aside. It is time it becomes a community project if it ever will.

   To those who may have come to my presentation last year this is the 
TLE-BU web-interface backup program. The program barely resembles the 
one I showed way back then. It is far more stable, *much* faster, has 
many new features, is far more secure and generally just way more 
developped than it was back then.

   If anyone wants to check it out before hand grab a copy from CVS off 
sourceforge at http://tle-bu.sf.net. Alternatively, send me an email and 
I will email back a copy of the latest tarball which is a little over 
200kb (the one on SF can fall behind because I mostly use CVS). The main 
website at http://tle-bu.thelinuxexperience.com is kind of out of date 
(one of the many things I need to update). Most of the screenshots are 
no longer accurate, too.

   As an aside, I am currently working on converting all the text in the 
program to be easily changed to support multiple languages. This is what 
I am working on just now. Once I am done I would *love* help from 
non-programmers and programmers alike in translating the 'words' and 
'help' files into other languages.

   Well, I am probably rambling now.

   If this is considered off-topic then please someone mention and 
anyone interested email me off list.

   Thanks everyone!!

Madison

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Madison Kelly (Digimer)
TLE-BU, The Linux Experience; Back Up
http://tle-bu.thelinuxexperience.com
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