first pass on survey results blog post

content/blog/2024-03-survey/index.md

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++++
+title="Results of the community survey"
+date=2024-03-12
++++
+
+*We ran a community survey to gather feedback from Garage users and potential
+users during a two-month period. One of the main objectives of
+this survey was to determine expectations from the community for Garage's
+upcoming v1.0 release and for future work. Read this article for a discussion
+of the results.*
+
+<!-- more -->
+
+---
+
+The survey collected 127 response during a time period of almost 2 months,
+from the 15th of January to the 12th of March. 
+The first question we asked users were how they have heard of Garage:
+the majority answered that they have head of Garage through a link
+aggregator or social network such as Reddit or HN. A portion of
+users have heard of it from word of mouth, and a significant portion also
+answered "Other". Unfortunately we didn't ask respondents for details
+if they selected "Other", so I'm quite curious as to what this could be.
+Other choices have almost negligible number of responses.
+
+<center><img src="all-how-known.png" /></center>
+
+Half of the respondents indicated that they are currently running a Garage cluster
+for production data, of which a small fraction indicated running it in a commercial
+setting. Another third of respondents indicated that they are currently testing Garage
+or have tested it previously.
+
+<center><img src="all-currently-admin.png" /></center>
+
+## About currently running Garage installations
+
+We first asked users what kind of data they were storing in Garage.
+The first answer, selected by about half of the participants,
+is for storing back-ups, followed closely by personal files.
+Other answers follow with a rougly linearly decreasing pattern.
+
+<center><img src="all-data-kind.png" /></center>
+
+The majority of users are not running Garage in geodistributed mode,
+but many users are also running in 2, 3 or even 4 locations.
+
+<center><img src="all-n-zones.png" /></center>
+
+A large majority of users are only using Garage through the S3 API.
+The remaining users are mostly using a mix of S3 API and web API,
+with a small number of users (5) using Garage primarily as a web server.
+
+<center><img src="all-access-mode.png" /></center>
+
+Regarding the size of clusters, the majority of installed clusters are less
+than 1TB in size.  The others are almost all between 1TB to 10TB. 8 users
+indicated that they are running clusters of more than 10TB. Two users that
+reported running clusters of more than 100TB, but they also indicated that they
+are not currently using Garage, so I think that's the size of the data they
+would like/need to store on Garage, but not the actual size of an
+installed cluster.  The number of objects stored in clusters is quite evenly
+split between less than 10k, 10k to 100k, and more than 100k.
+
+<center><img src="all-cluster-size.png" /></center>
+<center><img src="all-cluster-object-count.png" /></center>
+
+For about half of respondents, this means storing mostly objects of around 100MB in size.
+For the others, it's mostly objects of around 10MB. This is very inexact since the
+proposed answers for cluster size and object count had such large ranges.
+
+<center><img src="all-object-size.png" /></center>
+
+## Satisfaction regarding Garage
+
+A majority of users reported a high degree of satisfaction with Garage.
+About a quarter said that Garage has some significant flaws. A small portion
+of respondents indicated that they cannot use Garage due to missing
+important features or critical bugs, but still took the time to answer
+the survey (thanks to them!).
+
+<center><img src="all-satisfaction.png" /></center>
+
+The top 3 strong points of Garage reported by its users are: good S3 compatibility
+(first place, with 2/3 of respondents agreeing), good performance on small / low-power
+machines, and easy setup. I'd say we are pretty much on target, as these are some of the
+main objectives of Garage.
+
+<center><img src="all-strong-points.png" /></center>
+
+As for most wanted features in Garage, there is a clear winner with a web interface
+for cluster administration, with over 40% of users mentioning it.  The second most
+wanted feature is support for S3 versioning, with almost 30% of answers.
+
+<center><img src="all-wanted-features.png" /></center>
+
+The vast majority of users reported never losing data that they stored in Garage.
+Only one indicated that they lost data and it was Garage's fault: this was
+because they tried to move an LMDB database between machines with different
+architectures, but the LMDB on-disk format is architecture specific. We should
+probably be more clear about this in the documentation.
+
+<center><img src="all-lose-data.png" /></center>
+
+
+# Users in a "homelab/self-hosted setting"
+
+52 respondents indicated that they are using Garage for storing production
+data in a homelab or self-hosted setting. I'd say this is the most
+representative portion of Garage users, as it is its primary target.
+Let's look at the answers from these users only.
+
+## About the clusters
+
+Personal files now takes the first place of the kinds of data stored on these clusters,
+still closely followed by back-ups.
+
+<center><img src="homelab-data-kind.png" /></center>
+
+These users are mostly not using Garage in a geodistributed setting.
+The distribution of answers is very similar to the overall.
+
+<center><img src="homelab-n-zones.png" /></center>
+
+Most clusters of these users are less than 1TB and size,
+and the remaining are mostly in the 1TB - 10TB range.
+There are fewer clusters than average storing more than 100k objects in this population,
+but the distribution of object sizes (not shown) is very similar to the overall.
+
+<center><img src="homelab-cluster-size.png" /></center>
+<center><img src="homelab-cluster-object-count.png" /></center>
+
+## Satisfaction regarding Garage
+
+Homelab/self-hosting users reported a level of satisfaction a bit higher with Garage,
+with almost 3/4 very satisfied.
+
+<center><img src="homelab-satisfaction.png" /></center>
+
+The top 3 reasons for using Garage are the same, but good performance on small
+/ low-power machines is now taking the first place.
+
+<center><img src="homelab-strong-points.png" /></center>
+
+The top 2 wanted features are still the same, now with an equal number of votes.
+
+<center><img src="homelab-wanted-features.png" /></center>
+
+# Users in a "commercial setting"
+
+Fewer users indicated that they are running Garage in a commercial setting,
+as this concerned only 12 of the respondents to the survey.
+
+## About the clusters
+
+Half of users reported using Garage to store back-ups,
+and almost half reported storing observability data and web app / service data.
+One third selected static websites.
+
+<center><img src="commercial-data-kind.png" /></center>
+
+Users in a commercial setting are more consistent in their use of the
+geo-distribution features offered by Garage. Only one third of users are
+not running in geo-distributed mode. Another third is running Garage in 2 locations,
+and the last third is running in 3 or more locations, thus benefitting from
+the best resiliency properties that Garage can offer.
+
+<center><img src="commercial-n-zones.png" /></center>
+
+The majority of commercial deployments are storing between 1TB and 10TB of data.
+About a quarter are storing more than 1 million objects.
+
+<center><img src="commercial-cluster-size.png" /></center>
+<center><img src="commercial-cluster-object-count.png" /></center>
+
+It seems that the average object size is much smaller in this population:
+the majority of answers correspond to average object sizes of less than 10MB,
+and one foruth of answers corresponds to objects of around 1MB.
+
+<center><img src="commercial-object-size.png" /></center>
+
+
+## Satisfaction regarding Garage
+
+Three quarter of these users reported a high degree of satisfaction with Garage,
+about the same as for homelab users.
+
+<center><img src="commercial-satisfaction.png" /></center>
+
+The most liked qualities of Garage are a bit different. Fewer users reported
+satisfaction due to the easy setup of Garage, but more users indicated 
+that the possibility of easily adding and removing nodes was important to them.
+Good tolerance to offline nodes and crashes, and good performance in the face
+of latency, which are the core properties that make Garage work well in
+geo-distributed settings, were selected by two thirds of users, most likely
+the same that said they are running in geo-distributed mode.
+
+<center><img src="commercial-strong-points.png" /></center>
+
+A web interface for cluster administration is still the most wanted feature, with 40%
+of votes. Then, one third voted for better monitoring and observability, and for
+per-bucket levels of consistency and numbers of replicas. Only 25% voted for S3
+versioning.
+
+<center><img src="commercial-wanted-features.png" /></center>
+
+# Users that have the biggest clusters
+
+7 users reported running clusters storing more than 10TB of data.
+About half of these users are using Garage for a homelab or self-hosted setup,
+and one is in a commercial setting.
+
+<center><img src="big-currently-admin.png" /></center>
+
+## About the clusters
+
+Almost all of these users are using Garage to store back-ups.
+Multimedia files are the second most selected option, which
+would explain why these clusters are so big.
+
+<center><img src="big-data-kind.png" /></center>
+
+These deployments are quite evenly split between not
+being geo-replicated and being geo-replicated in 2 or 3 locations.
+
+<center><img src="big-n-zones.png" /></center>
+
+## Satisfaction regarding garage
+
+A majority of users report a high degree of satisfaction with Garage,
+but many users also reported significant flaws.
+
+<center><img src="big-satisfaction.png" /></center>
+
+Unsurprisingly, when clusters start becoming big enough, the most requested
+improvement is better performance around the board.
+Per-bucket levels of consistency and number of replicas was also selected
+by almost half of users.
+
+<center><img src="big-wanted-features.png" /></center>
+
+# Users that reported that garage had some significant flaws
+
+Focusing on users that reported that Garage is usable for them but has "significant flaws",
+the two most requested features were a web administration interface and S3 versioning.
+Bucket-level ACLs (that would allow anonymous access directly from the S3 endpoint)
+and performance improvements came next.
+
+<center><img src="flaws-wanted-features.png" /></center>
+
+Concerning users that said that Garage has critical issues that is preventing
+them from using it, the "Other" option was the most selected answer for the
+requested features. Licensing issues allegedly preventing commercial use were
+cited by a few users (hint: it's actually a non-issue, and we will write about
+this at some point), but I think for most of these users, they have a specific
+use case in mind which is not targeted by Garage. For instance, several have
+indicated that they would need POSIX filesystem compatibility and/or the
+possibility to use Garage as a CSI driver in Kubernetes (unfortunately, this is
+mostly impossible to achieve with good performance in a geo-distributed
+environment, and the principles on which Garage is based explicitly prevents it
+from fulfilling this role).
+

content/blog/2024-03-survey/update.sh

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+for f in *.png; do
+	cp -v /home/lx/Deuxfleurs/documents/survey/$f .
+done

content/blog/2024-07-european-commission-letter/index.md

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-+++
-title="Open letter to the European Commission"
-date=2024-07-14
-+++
-
-*Deuxfleurs has benefitted multiple times from European grants via the NGI project, for the developpement of Garage and Aerogramme, two pieces of software
-that we have developped for the needs of our association. Today, these grants are in peril, as the European Commission wishes to finance AI projects instead.
-We relay and sign an open letter from our friends at petites singularités, that asks that the NGI project be maintained, as it provides great assistance
-for the development of free software and commons on the Internet.*
-
-<!-- more -->
-
----
-
-Since 2020, Next Generation Internet (NGI) programmes, part of European
-Commission's Horizon programme, fund free software in Europe using a cascade
-funding mechanism (see for example NLnet's calls). This year, according to the
-Horizon Europe working draft detailing funding programmes for 2025, we notice
-that Next Generation Internet is not mentioned any more as part of Cluster 4.
-
-NGI programmes have shown their strength and importance to support the European
-software infrastructure, as a generic funding instrument to fund digital
-commons and ensure their long-term sustainability. We find this transformation
-incomprehensible, moreover when NGI has proven efficient and ecomomical to
-support free software as a whole, from the smallest to the most established
-initiatives. This ecosystem diversity backs the strength of European
-technological innovation, and maintaining the NGI initiative to provide
-structural support to software projects at the heart of worldwide innovation is
-key to enforce the sovereignty of a European infrastructure. 
-
-Contrary to common perception, technical innovations often originate from
-European rather than North American programming communities, and are mostly
-initiated by small-scaled organizations.
-
-Previous Cluster 4 allocated 27 millions euros to:
-
-- "Human centric Internet aligned with values and principles commonly shared in Europe" ;
-
-- "A flourishing internet, based on common building blocks created within NGI, that enables better control of our digital life" ;
-
-- "A structured eco-system of talented contributors driving the creation of new internet commons and the evolution of existing internet commons".
-
-In the name of these challenges, more than 500 projects received NGI funding in
-the first 5 years, backed by 18 organisations managing these European funding
-consortia.
-
-NGI contributes to a vast ecosystem, as most of its budget is allocated to fund
-third parties by the means of open calls, to structure commons that cover the
-whole Internet scope - from hardware to application, operating systems, digital
-identities or data traffic supervision. This third-party funding is not renewed
-in the current program, leaving many projects short on resources for research
-and innovation in Europe.
-
-Moreover, NGI allows exchanges and collaborations across all the Euro zone
-countries as well as "widening countries"[^1], currently both a success and and an
-ongoing progress, likewise the Erasmus programme before us. NGI also
-contributes to opening and supporting longer relationships than strict project
-funding does. It encourages to implement projects funded as pilots, backing
-collaboration, identification and reuse of common elements across projects,
-interoperability in identification systems and beyond, and setting up
-development models that mix diverse scales and types of European funding
-schemes.
-
-While the USA, China or Russia deploy huge public and private resources to
-develop software and infrastructure that massively capture private consumer
-data, the EU can't afford this renunciation.
-
-Free and open source software, as supported by NGI since 2020, is by design the
-opposite of potential vectors for foreign interference. It lets us keep our
-data local and favors a community-wide economy and know-how, while allowing an
-international collaboration.  This is all the more essential in the current
-geopolitical context: the challenge of technological sovereignty is central,
-and free software allows to address it while acting for peace and sovereignty
-in the digital world as a whole.
-
-*The list of all other collectives that have also signed the letter is available
-at the following address: <https://pad.public.cat/lettre-NCP-NGI>.*
-
----
-
-[^1]: As defined by Horizon Europe, widening Member States are Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Greece, Hungary, Latvia, Lituania, Malta, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia. Widening associated countries (under condition of an association agreement) include Albania, Armenia, Bosnia, Feroe Islands, Georgia, Kosovo, Moldavia, Montenegro, Morocco, North Macedonia, Serbia, Tunisia, Turkey and Ukraine. Widening overseas regions are : Guadeloupe, French Guyana, Martinique, Reunion Island, Mayotte, Saint-Martin, The Azores, Madeira, the Canary Islands.

garage

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-Subproject commit 070a8ad110cb75dd2df7ddc9ecbb5c814291ac89
+Subproject commit 238545e56486b857fab41e0703fc9bccbcd50a2c

static/icons/site.webmanifest

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-  "short_name": "Garage",
+  "short_name": "",
   "icons": [
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       "src": "/android-chrome-192x192.png",
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   "theme_color": "#ffffff",
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+  "display": "standalone"
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