Support and Mirroring: dAppCDN listing for GIMP

[dAppCDN (Sam)]

Hello everyone,

I’ve been a long-time user of GIMP and I truly appreciate the massive effort behind the project. As a small token of my gratitude, I’ve just made a donation to support the ongoing development.

I also wanted to let you know that I’ve listed GIMP on dAppCDN:

https://dappcdn.com/download/graphic-apps/gimp

At dAppCDN, we already act as a primary or alternative mirror for several other open-source projects, helping with bandwidth and availability (we have a large network and we deliver files fast all over the world). If any of the core developers or maintainers (e.g., @Jehan or @schumaml) would like to take direct control over the release process on dAppCDN — which can be fully automated — I would be more than happy to provide the necessary credentials.

Otherwise, we will personally ensure that the listings are kept up-to-date with every official stable release.

Thank you!
Sam - dAppCDN

[Jehan]

Hi @dAppCDN !

@dAppCDN

I’ve just made a donation to support the ongoing development.

Thanks!

@dAppCDN

If any of the core developers or maintainers (e.g., @Jehan or @schumaml) would like to take direct control over the release process on dAppCDN — which can be fully automated — I would be more than happy to provide the necessary credentials.

Sorry, we are not interested by taking control of this account. First because we have enough work for publication (even automated procedures take maintenance work! ), second because we don’t want to play favorites. We had many propositions across the years by distributors who wanted to suggest we move on using their platform for distributing GIMP, often also implying we should start using them exclusively. It usually comes with the promise that it will make everything smoother and that they will handle hosting costs, etc.

I won’t name the last platform suggesting this (just a few years ago), telling us how they loved FLOSS and that they would donate monthly percentage of their income to projects they host, etc. For the same reasons, we refused. A few years later, they got bought, then suddenly stopped donating to the projects they were hosting… Of course I’m not saying it will happen to you, nor do I hope it will. Just trying to explain how relying on single-point-of-failure platforms is not a great idea.

Also starting treating contributors (mirrors are one type of contributor) as very special “partners” rarely ends well (I have a very specific FLOSS project in mind as example when I say this which goes through a lot these days because of making such mistakes by the past!).

But of course, you are very free to continue hosting GIMP. That’s completely cool as long as you respect the GPLv3 license, that you don’t make it look like it’s an official account (not impersonating core team basically) and other similar issues. That’s the power of Free Software.

On this note, you could also become one of our official mirrors, if you are interested. Then you’ll be even listed in the list of official mirror sponsors: GIMP - Sponsors

You can do this by making a request here: Sign in · GitLab

… then we’ll exchange some rsync credentials and add you to our mirror infrastructure (MirrorBits, handling geo-located download redirections).

Thanks!

P.S.: another great example of us really loving community work and relying on the redundancy of the community of contributors rather than single points of failures: not long ago, the Foundation moved on to handling its whole download infra through a single corporate CDN donating its bandwith. Though we are very thankful to such corporation sponsoring FLOSS, the GIMP core team voted internally and decided not to follow the move. We kept our infrastructure of mirrors sponsored by many entities (more than 50 across the world). I think our project is the only one doing this on our whole infra. That’s how much we care.

[dAppCDN (Sam)]

Hi @Jehan,

Thank you so much for the detailed and transparent response!

I saw GIMP on the Microsoft Store, Flathub, and Snap Store, and I figured you might appreciate another reliable mirror to add to the mix.

Regarding your points:

Account Management: No problem at all! We will continue to maintain the GIMP listing ourselves, ensuring it stays up-to-date with every official release.

The last platform: If we are thinking of the same platform, they haven’t changed a bit. It’s been common practice for them to launch DDoS attacks in the past. If that’s the case, I agree - GIMP and any other free project should definitely stay away from them.

Single-point-of-failure: This is actually the core philosophy behind how we’ve built dAppCDN - to avoid relying on a single service or infrastructure. We have a similar resilient approach for our long-term roadmap, but that’s a conversation for another time.

Special partners: That sounds like a cautionary tale. I’d love to learn more (via PM, if possible) about which project went through that, just so we can ensure dAppCDN avoids making similar mistakes. I am sure there is something we can do to help.

License & Ethics: We are fully committed to respecting the GPLv3 license and the spirit of the GIMP project.

Official Mirror: I would be honored to have dAppCDN join your official mirror infrastructure. I will follow your lead and open a request on the GNOME GitLab in the upcoming weeks to set up the rsync credentials and MirrorBits integration.

P.S.: I’d dare to say that GIMP, along with VLC, are among the very few projects that have managed to stay truly independent and community-driven for so long.

Thank you again for the warm welcome and for the incredible work you do on GIMP!

Best regards,
Sam - dAppCDN

[Jehan]

@dAppCDN

I saw GIMP on the Microsoft Store, Flathub, and Snap Store, and I figured you might appreciate another reliable mirror to add to the mix.

Sure, I imagined one could mention these. Well for the MS Store, it’s just that it’s the recommended (by Microsoft) way to distribute on their OS. So they came to us and helped us initially get us set up there (also back then, the MS Store used to be filled with scammy GIMP entries, and they got rid of them all when we came in, hence finally protecting people). Now, there are clearly a lot less of downloads on this “store” than on our mirrored servers, but well…

For the Flathub and Snap Store, it’s a bit similar, but limited to the package type. People want these package formats, and they usually expect them to be available on these repos.

We still have to draw a line somewhere otherwise that never stops, even though I agree it is quite an arbitrary line!

There is another thing which relates to community logic again: we are never completely against a lot of stuff regarding packaging, but it still requires people to do the work. These people are the real “voters” here. As a maintainer, I want to avoid doing packaging work (though I did quite a bit of it when there were not many contributors on this side!), and I won’t be the one who’ll tell a packager what they should work on. They decide themselves.

I’m not a manager, they are not employees, we are not a corporation.

@dAppCDN

Official Mirror: I would be honored to have dAppCDN join your official mirror infrastructure. I will follow your lead and open a request on the GNOME GitLab in the upcoming weeks to set up the rsync credentials and MirrorBits integration.

Cool!