Slowly getting faster

Author: eighthave
Source

Sponsored:

Atlas of AI: Power, Politics, and the Planetary Costs of Artificial Intelligence - Audiobook


Uncover the true cost of artificial intelligence.

"Atlas of AI" by Kate Crawford exposes how power, politics, and profit extract from our planet, our labor, and our freedom.

From hidden mines to massive data empires, discover how AI is reshaping who we are—and who holds control.

Listen now, and see the system behind the screens before the future listens to you. = > Atlas of AI $0.00 with trial. Read by Larissa Gallagher


We have been a bit quiet recently on some fronts, like this blog and on
merge requests to review. We strive to keep our users informed, and we
always appreciate contributions, even when we cannot immediately review
them. F-Droid started in 2010, so we have some technical debt and cannot
always move fast. We appreciate patience when contributing. The good news
is that this is because we are really quite busy with a whole slew of large
improvements that all seemed to happen at the same time. So here is a quick
overview:

  • You might have noticed that this website sometimes ran really slowly. We
    have been working to improve that. Since we rolled out the new front
    facing web servers, we have seen a large improvement there. And now we
    get better data about network usage and server state which means that we
    can more effectively troubleshoot and optimize going forward.

  • We’re wrapping up a major
    overhaul
    of the
    official F-Droid client app (thanks to FFDW funding), including a
    security audit (thanks to
    NLnet funding). This
    replaces huge chunks of technical debt, fixes many bugs, adds a
    comprehensive test suite, and should make it much easier for contributors
    to follow the code.

  • There are new contributor buildserver instances for testing app builds
    on the production setup. This has sped up the app review process,
    especially for key apps that are complicated to build, like Element or Jitsi Meet. These instances also let us do regular,
    repo-wide scans to find any non-free
    dependencies
    that
    have might have snuck in.

  • After using the Ansible automation for contributor buildserver
    instances, this setup is now proven, and we are now switching the
    production setup to use it. That means anyone can inspect and recreate
    the production setup with relative ease.

  • We are setting up new hardware for the production buildserver to enable
    parallelizing the build
    processes.

  • We are finalizing our new legal entity with its own board of directors.

  • Setting up more F-Droid core contributors to get paid to work on F-Droid.

And that is just a sample of what all is going on. F-Droid can move faster
with more contributions, and we want your contributions! It can be anything
from app
reviews, diving in
to fix
issues,
and donations to enable more people to spend more time to making F-Droid better.

Read more