im working on a decentralized messaging app and generally up until recently i thought in such a system, if a peer is offline, you cant send a message... it wouldnt be "decentralized" if there was some central queue of messages.

it took embarassingly long, but then it hit me... git... just regular git is a decentralized database.

in my setup i need the ability for others to be abe to read and only i should be able to write to it. that functionality is out-the-box in git.

git is also pretty standardized so there are many providers if users want to move away from Github.

the storage requirements for my project are fairly small. typically small text messages. the data itself thats publicly readable would be encrypted.

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[–] 17 points 1 month ago* (1 child)

If the question is really about "can", than the answer is definitely yes.

If it's about if you should, than it's a clear no. Because storing data in a GitHub Project is not the use case. Nothing in the protocols or the platform itself is optimized for that. Also GitHub could just pull the plug of your project if they ever feel that it is against their terms.

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  • [–] [S] 0 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 child)

    that "can" is all i need to know/confirm. im not using git in a conventional way at all.

    it'll be unfortunate if github pulls the plug on my app. a key detail about git is that its decentralised. users can use different providers like gitlab (many have a free offering). git itself can have multiple remotes for redundency.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 month ago (1 child)

    Pretty easy for the few platforms offering this to ban you and any accounts hosting your project, even if you make a new one.

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  • [–] [S] -1 points 1 month ago (2 children)

    In any case it wouldn't be on my account. It would be great for users to self-host. Things like GitHub would only make it easier to get started to test things out.

    Why would they ban my account? That would be unsettling. I'm a developer. The code itself is fairly basic git stuff.

    My project is hardly popular, but if it gets there, I'm sure it would impact githubs performance. Would the concern be that my app ddos GitHub? I can explicitly prevent remotes like GitHub if necessary.

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