Your relay is not Open Source
Discussion
I have not applied for funding for my relay, as:
1. I do not need it
2. It is a commercial service
3. it does not fit the Open Source purity test that many Nostrers whine about
and it is not what I am referring to
Okay. Well I agree with you then.
On the other hand this made me think about funding for infra.
When you fund infrastructure, you are funding the end result (the service’s existence) and not the software directly.
Therefore I don’t think it should matter if it is or not, unless the funding includes that condition. It doesn’t change the thing you are funding and software in the cloud is not verifiable.
I have thought of starting a fund that goes to funding open infra on Nostr.land like hist.nostr.land, free translations for clients, or maybe relays for NWC/NSC.
The condition there is you zap, I run the service, and everyone benefits.
Services like relays and translations are mostly drop-in to replace. So I think the model “the funded product is the service” makes sense for those services.
This would work for an infrastructure fund in specific, but not for an OSS fund which is more funding the software that happens to run large infrastructure as well.
Notice how very few open source their infra? Some of us are trying to build systems designed for more than a single docker container.
Infrastructure, and usually code powering them is very hard to open source imo. In a way that is useful.
Open source with external users puts an inherent speed limit on how fast you can move and adds maintenance time.
Part of the reason I don’t open source NFDB is commercial, but part of it is also supporting external users and the guarantees needed. It is somewhat complicated to operate without experience, and there can be a lot of breaking changes at times.
Both of these costs are not worth the contributions (most likely none as it is a pretty specific thing).
I would classify things like NFDB, or any large infrastructure as application specific.
An AS system is usually not useful to anyone except the people it developed it, and the problems it solves at that place. Those usually require hitting a certain scale (one that is low or high depending on the type)
Anyone else that has a similar problem will not be well served by someone else’s AS system, as “similar” is not enough. And they usually have the skills to build their own.
The only people that benefit from open sourcing such a system is people that want to rip off existing effort for a quick buck and don’t care how well it runs or fits them.
For the average user, there are the standard options, that work much better at their scale.
> Infrastructure, and usually code powering them is very hard to open source imo. In a way that is useful.
> or any large infrastructure as application specific.
Your servers and your network is not my servers nor my network. Your control plane and service discovery (if you have one) might be meant for colo, full cloud, kubs as a service, physical hardware, theres' no point releasing it.
I think many don't admit there is some security through obscurity as well. Knowing long-term topology could allow an attacker to cripple systems more easily
My block storage might be cheaper than yours, my object storage might be cheaper. There are so many differences.
For example,
- my new infra relies on a low latency control plane now, that can't really happen in the cloud
- I have shared storage on a trusted network
just heavily depends on the application and costs involved.
I can not believe you wont open source everything Cat, how are you supposed to accede to Valhalla? 🤣