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A faster heart for F-Droid

f-droid.org

121–130 of 231 posts

Re: A faster heart for F-Droid

#121

> this server is physically held by a long time contributor with a proven track record of securely hosting services. We can control it remotely, we know exactly where it is, and we know who has access. I can’t be the only one who read this and had flashbacks to projects that fell apart because one person had the physical server in their basement or a rack at their workplace and it became a sticking point when an argu…

>We worked out a special arrangement so that this server is physically held by a long time contributor with a proven track record of securely hosting services.

Not clear if "contributor" is a person or an entity. The "hosting services" part make it sound more like a company rather than a natural person.

Re: A faster heart for F-Droid

#122

It's frankly embarrassing how many of the comments on this thread are some version of looking at the XKCD "dependency" meme and deciding the best course of action is to throw spitballs at the maintainers of the critical project holding everything else up.

F Droid is no where near being a critical project holding Android up. The Play Store, and the Play Services themselves are much more critical. Being open source doesn't make you immune from criticism for not following industry standards or being called out for poor security.

> The Play Store, and the Play Services themselves are much more critical.

Critical for serving malware and spyware to the masses, yes. GrapheneOS is based on Android and is far better than a Googled Android variant precisely because it is free of Google junk and OEM crapware.

Re: A faster heart for F-Droid

#123
post #62

> this server is physically held by a long time contributor with a proven track record of securely hosting services. We can control it remotely, we know exactly where it is, and we know who has access. I can’t be the only one who read this and had flashbacks to projects that fell apart because one person had the physical server in their basement or a rack at their workplace and it became a sticking point when an argu…

> a $400,000 grant IDK if they could bag this kind of grant every year, but isn't this the scale where cloud hosting starts to make sense?

So that they can pay 100x more expenses for.. no gain? They would pay an arm just for traffic.

Re: A faster heart for F-Droid

#124
post #74

Good. But I wish PostmarketOS supported more devices. On battery, tons of kernel patches could be set per device plus a config package in order to achieve the best settings. On software and security...you will find more malware in Play Store than the repos from PmOS/Alpine. I know it's not a 100% libre (FSF) system, but that's a much greater step towards freedom than Android, where you don't even own your device.

The issue with Linux-based phones is and remains apps. Waydroid works pretty well, but since you need to rely on it so much, you are better off using Graphene or Lineage in the first place.

Re: A faster heart for F-Droid

#125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which one of those things do you think you can't get in a datacenter?

That's not the point. The point is that a "home" setup can basically replicate or exceed a "professional" setup when done right.

A home setup might be able to rival or beat an “edge” enterprise network closet.

It’s not going to even remotely rival a tier 3/4 data center in any way.

The physical security, infrastructure, and connectivity will never come close. E.g. nobody is doing full 2N electrical and environmental in their homelab. And they certainly aren’t building attack resistant perimeter fences and gates around their homes, unless they’re home labbing on a compound in a war torn country.

Re: A faster heart for F-Droid

#126

It's frankly embarrassing how many of the comments on this thread are some version of looking at the XKCD "dependency" meme and deciding the best course of action is to throw spitballs at the maintainers of the critical project holding everything else up.

I think both of those POVs are wrong. The whole thing about F-Droid is that they have worked hard on not being a central point of trust and failure. The apps in their store are all in a repo (https://gitlab.com/fdroid/fdroiddata) and they are reproducibly built from source. You could replicate it with not too much effort, and clients just need to add the new repository.

Re: A faster heart for F-Droid

#127
post #109
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The OSU Open Source Lab gives machines to groups in their datacenter: https://osuosl.org/services/hosting/ It has hosted quite a few famous services.

Which famous services? I doubt OSU is going to host F-Droid. It doesn't even sound like F-Droid would want them to host it.

F-Droid is the best known non-corporate Android App Store... Why wouldn't they be willing to host it?

It's a critical load-bearing component of FOSS on Android.

Re: A faster heart for F-Droid

#128
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

400K would go -fast- if they stuck to a traditional colo setup. Donations like this are rare and it may be all they get for a decade. Personally I would feel better about round robin across multiple maintainer-home-hosted machines.

For reference, in the US at least, there was/is a company called Joes Data Center in KC who would colo a 1U for $30 or $40 a month. I'd used them for years before not needing it anymore, so not some fly by night company(despite the name). At that rate, that would buy you nearly 1000 years of hosting.

Joe's got bought out by Patmos.

The jury's still out on whether or not this is a good thing.

Re: A faster heart for F-Droid

#130
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

400K would go -fast- if they stuck to a traditional colo setup. Donations like this are rare and it may be all they get for a decade. Personally I would feel better about round robin across multiple maintainer-home-hosted machines.

For reference, in the US at least, there was/is a company called Joes Data Center in KC who would colo a 1U for $30 or $40 a month. I'd used them for years before not needing it anymore, so not some fly by night company(despite the name). At that rate, that would buy you nearly 1000 years of hosting.

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