Comment by xorcist
10 hours ago
> one person had the physical server in their basement
Unless you have even the faintest idea about how F-Droid does it, please stop spreading FUD. All the article says is that it is not a normal contract but a special arrangement where one or a select few have physical access. It could be in a locked basement, it could be in a sealed off cage in a data center, it could be a private research area at a university. We don't know.
A special arrangement with an academic institution providing data center services wouldn't be at all surprising, that has been the case for many large open source projects since long before the term was invented, including Linux, Debian and GNU itself.
Many of these are run by professionals with high standards. The Debian project has done pioneering work with reproducible builds, for example, something the F-Droid project is also very much involved with. Those things are what creates trust in the project.
> It could be in a locked basement, it could be in a sealed off cage in a data center, it could be a private research area at a university. We don't know.
Yes, and that is exactly the problem. They didn't write "a large university/company/government institute which wishes to remains anonymous has graciously donated space in their ISOwhatever certified in-house hosting facility", they wrote "physically held by a long time contributor".
It is written as if it is just Some Guy's Mom's Basement, with a guarantee of Trust Me Bro. If it is indeed hosted in a professional environment, why don't they say so?
People are assuming the worst because it isn't their first rodeo, and they've seen it go wrong time and time again. If F-Droid wants to be taken seriously Just Trust Us isn't good enough - especially with their main selling point being "you can't trust Google"!
> A special arrangement with an academic institution providing data center services
They would have said this if it were the case. Why would they make it sound so sketchy if it wasn't otherwise? There is no "FUD", you don't know better than anyone else would either, so you don't get to make that argument and then speculate yourself.