Popular Linux orgs Freedesktop and Alpine Linux are scrambling for new webhost

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Hosting choices: Hetzner, AWS, and jurisdiction concerns

  • Freedesktop is leaning toward self-hosting on Hetzner rather than accepting “free AWS,” to keep control and let sponsors pay bills instead of shipping hardware.
  • Some argue Hetzner is fully “production-grade” and use it successfully for revenue-generating systems and large VM fleets.
  • Others claim Hetzner is less “professional” than hyperscalers, citing hardware failures and an abuse-handling dispute involving a defamatory pornographic profile image and German “Impressum” requirements.
  • There is disagreement on whether Hetzner acted professionally in that case: one side sees a legal and ethical failure, the other sees correct non-interference until clear legal orders.
  • Jurisdiction is a concern: some want to avoid US-controlled providers due to sanctions and politics, though Freedesktop’s legal entity is currently US-based.

Costs, bare metal vs VMs, and colocation

  • Users calculate that equivalent hardware on a premium provider (e.g., Equinix) would be wildly expensive, while Hetzner or similar could be 5–10x cheaper, especially with newer or auction hardware.
  • Debate over whether VPS/“cloud” vs bare metal/colo differ mainly in margin and add-on services (managed DBs, etc.).
  • Some say colo with owned hardware plus rsync-style backups is still far cheaper than cloud; others stress the hidden costs: redundancy, monitoring, on-call labor, and failure handling.
  • Bare metal is preferred for sensitive infrastructure (e.g., WireGuard CI) to avoid hypervisor-level compromise; VM-based hosting is seen as a supply-chain risk for some.

Open-source funding and corporate responsibility

  • Many are surprised Alpine and others aren’t “set for life” despite massive corporate use (especially in containers).
  • Commenters repeat the theme that most companies rely on OSS but rarely fund it meaningfully; individuals and small shops donate more reliably than large enterprises.
  • Debate over big Linux vendors: some accuse them of “taking free labor,” others strongly counter that at least one major vendor employs large teams to develop core OSS (kernels, desktops, Wayland, etc.) instead of just writing checks.

Alternatives: universities, mirrors, P2P, and Cloudflare

  • Suggestions include university-based hosting (e.g., Oregon State’s Open Source Lab), but there’s concern about required root/sudo access and potential supply-chain risk.
  • Old-style mirror networks (often at universities/ISPs) still exist but are less prominent; several argue more mirrors reduce central hosting pressure.
  • Cloudflare mirrors and similar CDN-style support are mentioned, but they don’t solve CI/build or “master” infrastructure, and some want the project to retain infra control.
  • Peer-to-peer (BitTorrent) is proposed for distribution, but challenges include user experience, verification workflows, and unsuitability for CI, issue trackers, and Git hosting.