- you can be your own F-Droid server

In fact it's a basic static HTTP(S) server that is generated with the list of .apk and meta-data so it rely doesn't require much.

I think what is concerning to people is that the most popular INSTANCE of F-Droid, the one that is by default when one downloads the F-Droid CLIENT, is "centralized" but again that's a misconception. It's only popular, it's not really central to F-Droid itself. Adding another repository in the F-Droid parlance is just a simple option of changing or adding a URL to more instances.

That being said if anybody here would like to volunteer to be provider a fallback to the build system to that popular instance, I imagine the F-Droid team would welcome that with open arms.

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 argument arose.

I know self-hosting is held as a point of pride by many, but in my experience you’re still better off putting lower cost hardware in a cheap colo with the contract going to the business entity which has defined ownership and procedures. Sending it over to a single member to put somewhere puts a lot of control into that one person’s domain.

I hope for the best for this team and I’m leaning toward believing that this person really is trusted and capable, but I would strongly recommend against these arrangements in any form in general.

EDIT: F-Droid received a $400,000 grant from a single source this year ( https://f-droid.org/2025/02/05/f-droid-awarded-otf-grant.htm... ) so now I’m even more confused about how they decided to hand this server to a single team member to host in unspoken conditions instead of paying basic colocation expenses.

All the hand waving and excuses around global supply chains, quotes, etc...it took pretty long for them to acquire commodity hardware and shove it in a special someone's basement and they're trying to make it seem like a good thing?

F-Droid is often discussed in the GrapheneOS community, the concerns around centralization and signing are valid.

I understand this is a volunteer effort, but it's not a good look.

People used to criticize the walled gardens for having capricious reviewers and slow review times, but I found F-Droid much more frustrating to get approval from and much slower to get a release out.

So this development is much appreciated. In fact I had an inkling that build times had improved recently when an update made it out to F-Droid in only a day or two.

“F-Droid is not hosted in just any data center where commodity hardware is managed by some unknown staff. 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. We can control it remotely, we know exactly where it is, and we know who has access.”

Countries which fear they could be cut off from the duopoly mobile ecosystem should be forcing android manufacturers to bundle in F-Droid; For the amount of nonsense regulations they force phone manufacturers to adhere to, bundling F-Droid wouldn't be that hard.

Google won't be happy, but anti-trust regulations would take care of it.

This just reads to me like they have racked a box in a colo with a known person running the shared rack rather than someone’s basement but who really knows they aren't exactly handing out details.

I'm curious why supply chain issues got in the way and why they couldn't just configure a Dell Poweredge and get delivery in a couple weeks.

I'm assuming they have some special requirements that weren't met by an off-the-shelf server, so I'm just curious what those requirements are.

This is ambiguous, it could mean either a contributor's rack in a colocation centre or their home lab in their basement. I'd like to think they meant the former, but I can't deny I understood the latter in my first read.

Also, no details on the hardware?

Saying this on HN, of course.

How many things went upside down and all the "right" things were done (corporate governance, cloud native deployment, automation, etc.). The truth is none of these processes are actually going to make things more secure, and many projects went belly up despite following these kinds of recommendations.

That being said, I am grateful to F-Droid fighting the good fight. They are providing an invaluable service and I, for one, am even more grateful that they are doing it as uncompromisingly as possible (well into discomfort) according to their principles.

It showed up one day while I searched about why F-Droid was always so extremely slow to update and download... then trying Droid-ify, that was never a problem any more, it clearly had much better connectivity (or simply less users?)

Brought to you by the helpful folks who managed to bully WinAmp into retreating from open source. Very productive.

> The previous server was 12 year old hardware and had been running for about five years. In infrastructure terms, that is a lifetime. It served F-Droid well, but it was reaching the point where speed and maintenance overhead were becoming a daily burden.

lol. if they're gonna use gitlab just use a proper setup - bigco is already in the critical path...