Should Nix self-host the binary cache?

[nyabinary]

Question

Do you believe that Nix should transition to self-hosting the binary cache on bare-metal hardware, rather than relying on third-party services for hosting its cache?

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[cafkafk]

TL;DR:

• Yes, but it will take a while, and cost a lot.
• Until we get there, we should try to be as agnostic towards specific providers as possible.
• We should provide caching to both official and community projects.

To the extend possible, yes. Currently, data center space is expensive, and at our scale, we're likely no longer looking at a hobbyist garage full of towers. We have to accept that for a time, we'll likely not have the option to say no to cloud providers, and that they can be useful tools, as they often provide rapid scaling and can be useful for disaster recovery.

That said, we should ensure that infrastructure is made in a cloud agnostic way, so as to be as independent as possible from a single cloud provider, and to make the shift to a self hosted solution as pain free as possible. This also means restricting usage of proprietary software in our infrastructure, to ensure its longevity.

At the end of the day, we can't control when we'll be ready to make the move financially, but we can be as prepared as reasonably possible for when it becomes an option. That said, I think the costs is too prohibitive for our current financial position, but it's very reasonable that it will be possible in the future.

Another thing worth mentioning is that we should consider providing cache to more projects. Ideally, I think the foundation should host a community cache, that would allow tenancy of projects compatible with our values, and meeting certain criteria such as being of a certain size. Making cache more available to smaller projects would be a way in which we can help foster a more lively ecosystem, and user our resources in a way that is useful to the community at large.