Kopia

TAS Score: S3/3 – D5/5 – A3 / T2 Critical criteria for this category: Recoverability.

Brief Description

Fast and secure open-source backup/restore tool with snapshots, deduplication, compression, and client-side encryption. Works with local storage, network shares, or any S3-compatible backend.

Architectural Role

Data protection layer: creates versioned, encrypted backups of your data, ensuring recoverability.

Technical Autonomy

✅ Works without internet (if backing up to local storage)
✅ Stores data locally (can also use remote storage)
✅ Does not require external accounts
✅ Allows data export (snapshots are portable)
✅ Provides offline updates (manual via packages)

Philosophical Assessment (whose.world criteria)

Criterion Status Comments ————————– ——————- ———————— Pause ✅ Backup can be paused/resumed at any time.

Exit ✅ Snapshots are ordinary files; you can stop using Kopia and keep your data.

Recoverability ✅ Core feature: snapshots allow restoration of previous states.

Visibility ✅ Open source, fully documented.

External Dependencies ✅ None if using local or self-hosted storage. ———————————————————————–

Configuration (Minimal)

Create a repository on an external USB drive:

kopia repository create filesystem --path /mnt/backup

Create a snapshot of your Docker data:

kopia snapshot create /opt/autonomous-stack

List snapshots:

kopia snapshot list

Restore:

kopia restore <snapshot-id> /tmp/restored

Set up a daily cron job to run snapshots:

0 2 * * * /usr/local/bin/kopia snapshot create /opt/autonomous-stack

Minimal Autonomous Server – uses Kopia for backups.

Alternatives

BorgBackup – similar, but Kopia has a more modern UI and cloud support
Duplicati – GUI-based, but less reliable for large datasets
Restic – fast, but no built-in GUI

Trajectory

Direction: stable.

Kopia is Apache-2.0 licenced and was open-sourced from the start. It was acquired by Veeam in 2022, but Veeam has continued to develop it as open source and uses it as the engine for their commercial products. The acquisition is the main risk signal — watch for feature gating or licence changes.

Signal assessment:

Signal	Status	Evidence
License	➖	Apache-2.0; unchanged since acquisition by Veeam (2022).
Feature gating	➖	No features gated yet; Veeam uses Kopia engine in commercial products but hasn’t restricted OSS.
Self-hosting	✅	Self-hosting remains the primary use case; no cloud dependency added.
Governance	⚠️	Acquired by Veeam in 2022; community contributions continue but corporate control increased.

Signal key: ✅ opening · ➖ neutral · ⚠️ closing