> Radicle is an open source, peer-to-peer code collaboration stack built on Git. Unlike centralized code hosting platforms, there is no single entity controlling the network. Repositories are replicated across peers in a decentralized manner, and users are in full control of their data and workflow. - https://radicle.dev/
There seems to be no way to get this kind of information from the radicle.network link in this article. Clicking the logo in the top left takes you to a page that just says "A public node run by the Radicle team", which is totally uninformative.
I was not aware of Radicle; it's a truly peer-to-peer Git forge which aims to guarantee commits are signed by current maintainers (among, I suppose, other goals).
The article mentions an us and a you, but I feel like it would have been an useful occasion to explain why move (from where?) and why Radicle. Maybe this was already discussed elsewhere?
I suppose similar discussions regarding GitHub are happening today and could explain why this was posted to HN.
If it helps:
There is no an explanation of what Radicle is/does in the announcement.
Radicle is pretty cool.
> Radicle’s Collaborative Objects (COBs) provide Radicle’s social primitive. This enables features such as issues, discussions and code review to be implemented as Git objects. Developers can extend Radicle’s capabilities to build any kind of collaboration flow they see fit.
I know I'm not supposed to make jokes, this is not reddit, but you might even say it's pretty radical.
For the reason of hbsd moving, see https://bsd.network/@HardenedBSD/116437657126172879
So instead of their self-hosted Gitlab instance being hammered, now their self-hosted Radicle instance will be hammered (and if they are lucky some of the other seeders will tank some of the load)?
I'm not sure that this will actually solve the problem. This seems more like a facade for a move they wanted to do anyways.
The load will be spread across the network, but I guess the main benefit is that everything continues working even though HardenedBSDs official seed is down.
Every user has their own node, and everyone's node talks to several seed nodes. Even if the official HardenedBSD seed is down, there's still going to be another node to sync with.
> This seems more like a facade for a move they wanted to do anyways.
Not even a facade really. They say this further down in the thread:
> Given our previously communicated desire to migrate to #Radicle, this is a good motivating factor for moving in that direction.
Yes they have been looking into decentralized technologies like mesh networking, reticulum, etc. for a while now.
My guess is the model is let the Github mirror repo be hit by bots and just do the dev work on the Radicle node.
- [0] https://hardenedbsd.org/article/shawn-webb/2024-09-23/harden...
In this scenario, how does p2p compare to ATProto? The downside of both is that you still need high available servers
Radicle is local-first, so you can create issues and patches (pull requests) even when offline. It will sync when you're back online.
Also, my understanding is that ATProto is relatively centralized in practice, wheras in radicle every node is sort of equal.
I don't think so? In the case of p2p (including radicle) you can run multiple not-so-reliable nodes. Of course that won't work for serving up a web frontend but that's distinct from the git repo itself.
Is Radicle an alternative to Fossil?
It seems to have similar ideas, but two big differences seem to be that 1. it's based on git 2. more focus on a truly decentralized p2p architecture
Radicle is a legit project that has been around for at least 5 years trying to solve a pretty hard problem.
With the awareness of the dangers of Github growing they could really start gaining traction but from what I understand they still have a big problem: you can host a node, the web UI and create repos, link it to your website but it will be hard for people to find your project and code. You are on the internet, but not on the visible one.
Radicle do have a search engine [0] but it won't return anything if you look for HardenedBSD. And maybe it is not Radicle role to provide the front door and code search infrastructure (I am pretty sure they to not have the money to support it).
So my guess is key to decentralized code forges, whether it is Radicle, Gitea or Forgego instances, really miss the search infrastructure today.
I am pretty sure HardenedBSD will keep mirrors on Github and Gitlab to stay "visible" to the broader Internet but what happen the day they have to leave because of some incompatibility with those corporations user agreement?
Wouldn't people discover HardenedBSD via google and then find the link to the code via the website?
I've personally never discovered projects through Github.
This is what I am getting
> Could not connect to rad.hardenedbsd.org The node may be offline or the address may be incorrect. Select a different node to continue.