I guess its just the sysadmin in me. If the 13 years worth of data was important it should have been backed up. Its all about RPO and RTO, their were both apparently 13 years?

Failing to plan, is planning to fail...

Do I feel bad some people lost some data? If ITT/Maemo lost all tomorrow would I be mad maemo or feel bad for users.

I would be freaking pissed, of course nobody would know because the forums would be down

Anyway, I am sure its not the first time I was called a dick, not even the first time this week.

Concerning the crackers: the crackers didn't know they were destroying 13 years worth of work; it's very reasonable to expect that this data was backed up somewhere. Frankly, it's the only responsible way to admin a project of that magnitude, so I'd expect that they expected it was backed up. That you are able destroy something doesn't lead to "you should destroy it," so yes, it was a reprehensible act.

Concerning the admins: the fact that it wasn't backed up doesn't mean that it was "deserved." It was certainly irresponsible to a blaming fault.

"Horrible things happen all the time all over the world and this is just another thing" is a crappy way to look at things, I know because I used to do it. It does allow you to not-engage or to step back from a situation, so if that's how some manage, I won't criticize, (oops), and of course the internet tubes aren't the best mode of communication so people may just be acting a bit more glib than they truly are.

Joe.

Well, if some subgenius penetrated Reggie's servers and wiped four years of collective wisdom, witty flame wars and community work about the NITs and maemo, I'd certainly pray that he could summon them back from a secret cache that was not part of the break-in...

Certainly, there's a difference; one is causing harm, and the other is merely negligent in protecting his (and others') data from an entire class of trivially foreseeable harm. The one who causes harm is evil, the one who fails to take reasonable measures to stop it is "merely" lazy, but this scarcely excuses the negligence.

Rest assured, I (and, I suppose, most folks) do blame the crackers for this; but (I thought) that goes without saying. There's nothing astonishing about the trashing; while certainly despicable, it's not news, and it's hardly controversial. Happens all the time, the attacked site restores their backups, fixes some vulnerabilities, and moves on.

The admin's negligence, OTOH, is quite astonishing, and while obviously less bad, deserves comment for its exceptionality.

I guess I'm not sure why it would be a social problem. But honestly, while the fact that many people do things like this does show a frightening side of human and/or social nature, it's hardly a revelation; c.f. serial killers. Should we be surprised that giving an evil person a computer and network connection doesn't magically turn them into a good person, that they show no more respect for others' data than for their lives?

Huh? Is there some reason to suppose a SubGenius would be a likely perp? (To be clear: I am not a member, just curious why the slam...)

they may even show less care as its "just data"...

bored punk kids with computers i say, maybe running the modern version of awardialer and happened to find the server as a valid target...

First - yes, a crime was committed, malicious vandals defaced a site and destroyed property.
This is not news... this happens all the time both in meatspace and on the internet.
Anyone who thinks the internet is safe is naive as a newborn at best, if not a complete buffoon.
Comparing the internet to downtown Detroit (or Memphis, or Miami) at midnight is taming things down far too much.

The loss is profound, and (even considering it was for a Microsoft product) this kind of loss of publicly valuable work saddens me. It's history lost. I feel bad for all of the people who contributed over all of these years, expecting their data to be safe. I also feel bad for those who will never get the chance to use what has been lost.

With that said...

What these admins did is (to expand on a previous analogy) much worse than leaving the keys in the car... they left the keys in the car with the car running at a busy intersection in the middle of the worst part of town during a blackout... oh - and they left the signed title right there on the seat along with their credit cards, debit cards, and a note with the PIN number on it.

Before you call me names for being so harsh, keep this in mind:
I've worked in the relevant fields (working with/creating valuable/sensitive data critical to the company's survival, data storage management (backups), and IT security) for 17 years (only counting Unix jobs).
This configuration violates more basic principles and basic "common sense" concepts than I care to consider.

I've had many arguments with many people who insisted a single online or offline copy of data was a "backup".
It's not a backup if you destroy all of it when you create the next copy.
It's not a backup if undetected file corruption destroys all copies of your data during the first copy.
A single, unchecked typo could have destroyed everything they had with that configuration.
Please do not refer to what they had as "two backups"... it wasn't. It was an online redundant pair... nothing more.

The fact that they had the entire system accessible from the internet is stunning.


I probably wouldn't have had such a strong reaction to this had it not been for the fact that I've spent the better part of two decades fighting against configurations like these.


Oh, and to expand on another comment previously made, the vandals likely couldn't imagine that the company could ever be in the position of not having any backups... that would be patently absurd!

that sounds like a knock on whitey... I'm highly offended.

(although we sure showed those Cherokee, didn't we ?)

No slam whatsoever (I actually find those "Church" concepts quite funny and healthy). I wrote "subgenius" uncapitalized, as a common noun. If I had written "a bad apple", would you be inquiring why the slam on Steve Job's operation ? :-)

So, what is maemo.org's backup policy? In a similar event (or hardware failure, fire, whatever) would it be possible to have the various bits (official repos, extras, bugzilla, garage, mailman, wiki, talk etc) up and running in a reasonable time frame (ie measured in days at most)?

Short answer, yes.
Longer answer, the site servers are backed up at at regular intervals to storage. In case of a catastrophe backups are available on short notice. Naturally the latest data would be lost, but not much.