A faster heart for F-Droid

Hardware choice and missing specifics

• The article prompts immediate curiosity and criticism about hardware details: readers note there is “zero” info on CPU, RAM, storage, or vendor.
• Some argue a decent second-hand Ryzen or PowerEdge‑class box is cheap and adequate; others counter that RAM and storage have become expensive and 32 GB is likely insufficient.
• There is debate over whether 12‑year‑old hardware is truly “Raspberry Pi–level”; multiple commenters say old Xeon servers or laptops still perform very well for many workloads.

Where the server lives: basement vs. colo vs. cloud

• The phrase “physically held by a long time contributor” triggers strong reactions. Many read it as “in someone’s bedroom/basement,” which they find amateurish and fragile.
• Others interpret it as a rack in a trusted person’s colocation footprint and argue that’s perfectly normal for open‑source infra.
• Several people insist a proper colo with locked cabinets and formal procedures could meet all their stated security requirements, often funded just from interest on the recent $400k grant.

Security, threat models, and trust

• One camp prefers self‑hosted hardware under the project’s direct control to reduce the number of parties that must be trusted (no cloud staff, fewer opportunities for state or corporate interference).
• Another camp argues that professional datacenters have better physical security, redundancy, and clearer legal boundaries; they see a single privately held box as a prime single point of failure and compromise.
• There is back‑and‑forth on how realistic state‑actor threats are, the ease of warrants against homes vs. data centers, and whether home setups can approach data‑center reliability.

Centralization, reproducible builds, and app‑store philosophy

• Commenters highlight that F‑Droid supports reproducible builds and multi‑party signing, and can be self‑hosted; they see it as less centralized than mainstream app stores.
• Skeptics respond that you still must trust the store to serve the same manifests and binaries to everyone, especially on first install.
• Some argue app stores should only distribute developer‑signed binaries and not rebuild apps at all; others compare F‑Droid to Linux distros, where distro‑built packages add assurance.

Funding, expectations, and community tone

• The $400k grant leads some to question why a single, vaguely located box is still central; others note that such funding is rare and must cover far more than colo.
• Several participants criticize the “HN pile‑on,” pointing out that much of the internet runs on underfunded volunteer infrastructure and that F‑Droid has delivered value for years despite constraints.