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So how do you like the article's suggestion to separate "growth hacking" from "commoning"? Are you saying that both are misleading, or agreeing with it? Not sure I get your point

And you are cordially invited to our chatroom on Matrix, if you want to hack around Garage: https://matrix.to/#/#garage:deuxfleurs.fr

We used to mostly talk French there - until yesterday!

This depends on your workload. It would work, but we first target fiber optics domestic connections.

We haven't looked too much into VPNs, although we do need some plumbing to distribute our whole infrastructure at Deuxfleurs.

Thanks for your enthusiastic feedback, fellow breton!

It's an interesting take you make about ML workloads. We haven't investigated that yet (next in line is e-mail: you see we target ubiquitous, low-tech needs that are horrendous to host). But we will definitely consider it for future works: small breton food trucks do need their ML solutions for better galettes.

It was actually deliberate to present our project through the political lens, today.

You will find a more streamlined presentation of Garage on our landing page at https://garagehq.deuxfleurs.fr/

Technical details are also documented (although it is insufficient and needs an overhaul): https://garagehq.deuxfleurs.fr/documentation/design/

Thank you for your comments!

This article broadly explains the motivation and vision behind our project. There are many object stores, why build a new one? To push self-hosting, in face of democratic/political threats we feel are daunting.

Sorry it didn't float your boat. You're just not the article's target audience I guess! (And, to answer your question: the target audience is mildly-knowledgeable but politically concerned citizens.)

I agree this is maybe not the type of post you'd expect on HN. But, we don't want to _compete_ with other object stores. We want to expand the application domain of distributed data stores.

I can't find a single proper discussion of your consistency and availability model

LGTM, I would be dubious too. This will come in time, please be patient (the project is less than 2 yo!). You know Cypherunks' saying? "We write code." Well, for now, we've been focusing on the code, and we want to continue doing so until 1.0. Some by-standers will do the paperware for sure, but it's not our utmost priority.

It's the layer below: a sound distributed storage backend. You can use it to distribute your Nextcloud data, store your backups, host websites... You can even mount it in your OS' file manager and use it as an external drive!

Busted! We might even have a Bagage[0] side-project...

[0] https://git.deuxfleurs.fr/Deuxfleurs/bagage

We made a comparison here: https://garagehq.deuxfleurs.fr/documentation/design/benchmar...

Other comments from my colleagues also shed light on Garage's specific features (do check the discussion on Raft).

In a nutshell, Garage is designed for higher inter-node latency, thanks to less round-trips for reads & writes. Garage does not intend to compete with MinIO, though - rather, to expand the application domain of object stores.

(Deuxfleurs administrative council member here:) Starting from a little association with 200€ in a cash box last year, we were indeed amazed to actually get this funding.

I strongly recommend NGI grants to any European citizen. Just look at the variety of profiles that NGI POINTER (one of the grant type) funded last year: https://pointer.ngi.eu/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/NGI-POINTE...

They even finance individuals wanting to contribute to FOSS up to 50k€ for a year.

My bad T_T My colleagues keep picking on me for this. Now that you, complete stranger, you see it too, I'm feeling obliged to improve the situation!

Basically, our association is trying to move away from file systems, for scalability and availability purposes. There's a similarity between RDBMS (say SQL) and filesystems, in the sense that they distribute like crap. Main reason being that they have too strong consistency properties. Although, one can use Garage as a file system, notably using WebDAV. It's a beta feature, called Bagage: https://git.deuxfleurs.fr/Deuxfleurs/bagage I'll let my knowledgeable fellows answer, if you'd like to hear about differences between seaweedfs and Garage in more detail :)

So basically, we are a hosting association that wanted to put their servers at home _and_ sleep at night. This demanded inter-home redundancy of our data. But none of the existing solutions (MinIO, Ceph...) are designed for high inter-node latency. Hence Garage! Your cheap and proficient object store: designed to run on a toaster, through carrier-pigeon-grade networks, while still supporting a tons of workloads (static websites, backups, Nextcloud... you name it)

This is an actual object store - we just have a talent for naming artifacts

Hey! NGI is funding Nyxt browser as part of the same sub-grant call. Check it out, I was quite thrilled! https://nyxt.atlas.engineer/

(I'm also part of Deuxfleurs)

With Garage, we are trying to eschew the need for a VPS, or at least provide on-premise failovers for individuals and tiny organisations.

Our argument, as stated by OP, is that domestic connections are now powerful enough to release the load on datacenters. We deem it more ecological and empowering to plug-in an old computer to your home box.