I’ve not made any secret of the fact that I want more people hacking on Amanda. This is both for selfish reasons – many hands make light work – and for altruistic reasons – a broader community of developers can provide better governance for the project and long-term continuity. With a few noticable exceptions, I haven’t had a lot of satisfaction.

I think part of the reason is that Amanda has a steep learning curve, even within the new Perl code. The time to climb that curve is a big investment, and folks with only a small itch to scratch can’t afford it.

In an effort to sweeten the pot, we (Zmanda) are offering to pay for flexible work on Amanda. Part-time or full-time, on your own schedule. Your choice of projects. Support and gratitude from the other hackers. And the option to become a full Zmanda employee if that’s your bent.

Here are some possible projects, to pique your interest:

• MySQL application (to round out the set with ampgsql)
• Cyrus Imapd application (gnutar doesn’t deal well with the application’s tiny files and hard links)
• OpenSSL for network transport, using certificates and keys for authentication
• Database-backed backup catalog
• Amvault upgrade
• Handle Logical EOM (LEOM) on all devices that support it, drastically reducing the number of parts Amanda writes
• Support for more cloud backends than just S3
• Parallel writes to multiple devices

If you’re interested, contact me (dustin@zmanda.com) and we’ll work something out!