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Leaving F-Droid

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Re: Leaving F-Droid

#61

Post by gazby »

em-bee wrote: post #60
gazby wrote: post #53

I briefly joined some F-Droid Dev rooms in hopes of helping with their speed/capacity issues by chasing some CDN sponsorships or expanding the mirror list, however the possibility that any commercial provider or user-provided mirror might have access logs enabled was enough to end the conversation. I 180'd after that. Never was a community-run project IME.

you mean that the f-droid maintainers did not want to rely on mirrors that would log downloads? sounds a bit extreme on the privacy front, but not entirely unusual. i see no relation to how the project is run though. on the contrary, i expect community run projects even more likely to reject logging because it only takes a few vocal people to demand that. meaning the more people have a voice, the more likely demands…

I'm talking literally just access logging though. Expecting even an individual, let alone a business, to run a publicly accessible web service without any form of access logging is just absurd IMO.

I'd expect privacy-inclined people to care vastly more about detecting and tracing indicators of compromise or similar over avoiding access logging on the open internet.

Edit: Use actual English.

Re: Leaving F-Droid

#62

Post by LjLies »

lucideer wrote: post #54
em-bee wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

on the contrary. open source (or free software) doesn't mean that every dispute has to be out in the open. there must be room to handle disputes privately, and the actions by some of the people involved here seem to show that they do not want to handle this in public. (whether that is justified or not is a different question, but again, without details we are unable to make that judgement) i find that dragging disput…

> doesn't mean that every dispute has to be out in the open Of course not, nor did I imply such an extreme. > we need to give people in dispute the space to resolve their issues without forcing them to face the court of public opinion. This only functions with balanced moderating forces within an internal dispute - where there is a clear power imbalance (e.g. a technical lead who holds exclusive keys to things), reso…

There is no space left. The people "in dispute" have left the project, and no one in the F-Droid space is really speaking up against Hans doing whatever he feels like despite the final (short-lived?) existence of councils and boards.

Re: Leaving F-Droid

#63

Post by em-bee »

gazby wrote: post #61
em-bee wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you mean that the f-droid maintainers did not want to rely on mirrors that would log downloads? sounds a bit extreme on the privacy front, but not entirely unusual. i see no relation to how the project is run though. on the contrary, i expect community run projects even more likely to reject logging because it only takes a few vocal people to demand that. meaning the more people have a voice, the more likely demands…

I'm talking literally just access logging though. Expecting even an individual, let alone a business, to run a publicly accessible web service without any form of access logging is just absurd IMO. I'd expect privacy-inclined people to care vastly more about detecting and tracing indicators of compromise or similar over avoiding access logging on the open internet. Edit: Use actual English.

i agree with you, but knowledge and understanding of these issues varies a lot. my confusion was your apparent conclusion that in a community run project this would have been better.

Re: Leaving F-Droid

#64

Post by LjLies »

lucideer wrote: post #55
gazby wrote: post #53

I briefly joined some F-Droid Dev rooms in hopes of helping with their speed/capacity issues by chasing some CDN sponsorships or expanding the mirror list, however the possibility that any commercial provider or user-provided mirror might have access logs enabled was enough to end the conversation. I 180'd after that. Never was a community-run project IME.

> Never was a community-run project IME. That's the impression given by posts linked here. The initiative to begin trying to transform it into a community-run project seems to have kicked off roughly 12 months or so ago[0] - and by all accounts seems to have been met with significant resistance from the bdfl that preceded it. [0] https://gitlab.com/fdroid/admin/-/commit/031eeb78c8e35960a9a...

The thing is that the BDFL was never appointed as such, either. The project's founder is Ciaran Gultnieks:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ciaran_Gultnieks

and Ciaran, while largely silent, still "holds the master keys" (figuratively and somewhat literally).

As an F-Droid member myself, albeit a completely tangential and pointless one, the only things I know about why Hans is _de facto_ leader and cannot be overridden even by the bodies created for overseeing the entire project are a couple of factors mentioned right here: that he is the only one with Owner access on GitLab, and that he is Technical Lead, "initially", in the board:

https://f-droid.org/en/2023/03/20/f-droid-board.html

Re: Leaving F-Droid

#65

Post by gazby »

em-bee wrote: post #63
gazby wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm talking literally just access logging though. Expecting even an individual, let alone a business, to run a publicly accessible web service without any form of access logging is just absurd IMO. I'd expect privacy-inclined people to care vastly more about detecting and tracing indicators of compromise or similar over avoiding access logging on the open internet. Edit: Use actual English.

i agree with you, but knowledge and understanding of these issues varies a lot. my confusion was your apparent conclusion that in a community run project this would have been better.

I would indeed expect a community-run project to have been better (at evaluating the trade-offs of access logging [which occurs on every other web property F-Droid users utilize]). If only because there would have been more than one voice that mattered, and thus consensus would be required rather than unilateral dictation.

Is the confusion a result of disagreement, or of my explaining my perspective poorly?

Re: Leaving F-Droid

#66

Post by ImJamal »

the_third_wave wrote: post #59

Without more information this just comes across as yet another Code of Conduct struggle session. Depending on which position an uninformed observer - and that means all of us here - takes it is either the result of Hans being an authoritarian *-ist/*-phobe hell-bent on playing power games or of Hans successfully fighting the multi-headed woke Hydra which intends to turn the project into yet another vessel for spreadi…

Ideology has already prevailed. They refused to let the Gab app on FDroid because they allow "things like racism, sexism, verbal abuse, violent nationalist propaganda, discrimination against gender and sexual minorities, antisemitism and a lot more things".

Interestingly enough they allow 4Chan apps which has all of those things. It is almost as though they are opposed to Gab specifically not against those things and were just coming up with an excuse and hoped nobody saw their double standards.

Re: Leaving F-Droid

#67

Post by em-bee »

gazby wrote: post #65
em-bee wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i agree with you, but knowledge and understanding of these issues varies a lot. my confusion was your apparent conclusion that in a community run project this would have been better.

I would indeed expect a community-run project to have been better (at evaluating the trade-offs of access logging [which occurs on every other web property F-Droid users utilize]). If only because there would have been more than one voice that mattered, and thus consensus would be required rather than unilateral dictation. Is the confusion a result of disagreement, or of my explaining my perspective poorly?

it's disagreement. i fully understand your perspective, however from what i have seen, there is a tendency for the consensus lean towards the lowest common denominator that all can agree on. iaw. the most paranoid wins (ok, not that extreme, but it illustrates my point)

of course the upside of community input is that you also have more moderate voices and technically knowledgeable ones that can explain the risks and help reduce peoples worries.

Re: Leaving F-Droid

#68

Post by lucideer »

LjLies wrote: post #64
lucideer wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Never was a community-run project IME. That's the impression given by posts linked here. The initiative to begin trying to transform it into a community-run project seems to have kicked off roughly 12 months or so ago[0] - and by all accounts seems to have been met with significant resistance from the bdfl that preceded it. [0] https://gitlab.com/fdroid/admin/-/commit/031eeb78c8e35960a9a...

The thing is that the BDFL was never appointed as such, either. The project's founder is Ciaran Gultnieks: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ciaran_Gultnieks and Ciaran, while largely silent, still "holds the master keys" (figuratively and somewhat literally). As an F-Droid member myself, albeit a completely tangential and pointless one, the only things I know about why Hans is _de facto_ leader and cannot be overridden…

> Hans is _de facto_ leader

In these kind of situations, "de facto" is usually the same as "actual" for all practical purposes.

Re: Leaving F-Droid

#69

Post by gazby »

em-bee wrote: post #67
gazby wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would indeed expect a community-run project to have been better (at evaluating the trade-offs of access logging [which occurs on every other web property F-Droid users utilize]). If only because there would have been more than one voice that mattered, and thus consensus would be required rather than unilateral dictation. Is the confusion a result of disagreement, or of my explaining my perspective poorly?

it's disagreement. i fully understand your perspective, however from what i have seen, there is a tendency for the consensus lean towards the lowest common denominator that all can agree on. iaw. the most paranoid wins (ok, not that extreme, but it illustrates my point) of course the upside of community input is that you also have more moderate voices and technically knowledgeable ones that can explain the risks and…

Yeah that makes sense. One of those things I'd love to see play out both ways and watch what happens lol.

Re: Leaving F-Droid

#70

Post by smegsicle »

is it just me or has there been an unlikely number of strange restructurings recently?

unity and openai as the most high profile, but also in niche places like yahtzee crowshaw / escapist mag, and now even fdroid

maybe a covid aftershock, have there been any others?

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