Too radical

Posted Jul 7, 2025 14:08 UTC (Mon) by massimiliano (subscriber, #3048)
In reply to: Too radical by yorgos
Parent article: Radicle Desktop released

I try to mix my replies to your quotes, I hope the result will be clear...

> I'm not sure I quite understand this point, but perhaps it's not that important. For any software I run on my machine, I'd **absolutely** want to be in control of what it stores on my machine.

It's not so important.

The idea is that in git repos (Radicle or not) the "owner" adds contents using push operations, and receives contents from others with pull (and, when necessary, merge) operations.

This is true in radicle nodes, but it is also true for any "plain" git repo, which is why in my proposal Radicle git repos would be usable (they would allow push and pull operations) even if the p2p layer does not provide git storage at all.

> Or unless *others* run nodes that provide this storage for you (e.g. permissive seed nodes). Which is the same situation as with GitHub, et al. You're leaving the durability of the git repo you care about to a 3rd party.

My main point is that "others" are not likely to run Radicle nodes "at scale". Not soon, not at "github scale", and not as efficiently as plain git repos.

> (Otherwise I don't understand how "adding the appropriate metadata" would allow information to be announced to the Radicle network)

Just adding the metadata would not be enough: the "repo node" would need to be explicitly announced on the p2p network, which will track its state and relay it to the other nodes.

In my idea the p2p network is still there (otherwise there's no decentralization), but its scope is very limited. Particularly, it does not store git objects at all. It only stores repo URLs, ref hashes, and user references (public keys and URLS to the "root user repo" that holds only the user metadata), and its only task is to index and relay this data.

> But I do agree, that we should try to get existing service providers to run Radicle nodes that announce information on the network!

My point is that we should not put ourselves in the position to wait for that!

IMHO, large-scale providers like GitHub will never host Radicle nodes: it is against their own interests. They do host plain git repos for free for open source projects, but they do so only because this increases usage for their platform as a whole.

And, again, IMHO, the global cost of hosting Radicle nodes for, ultimately, all the open source projects currently publicly accessible using git, is just too high.

I understand the intent "let's hope that many users will also run open and permissive nodes so that the global Radicle network capacity will be large enough to take over the world".

Call me a pessimist, but I am convinced that we'll never get there, mostly because of the enormous collective cost. On the other hand, large-scale providers are already offering plain git hosting for free. By designing Radicle to leverage that, I thought we could have a chance at conquering the world.