Bug#1106233: O: netdata -- real-time performance monitoring

[Daniel Baumann <daniel@debian.org>]

Package: wnpp
Severity: normal
Control: affects -1 + src:netdata

Hi,

for those who care about netdata:

  * netdata is a real-time performance monitoring software, it consists
    mainly of two parts: netdata agent and its plugins, and the web-ui

  * while the agent has been and still is free software, it has been
    a pain from a packaging and upstream-interaction point of view:

    - stuff was changed by rewriting everything constantly: first from
      bash to Python, then Python to Nodejs, and finally from Nodejs to
      Go. some parts are also in Rust, eBPF, and webassembly.

    - the "distribution" model of netdata was never packaging friendly
      to say the least (e.g. by using common build systems, or common
      build systems in the way they're supposed to be used). the
      upstream releases always were a pain with every new version and
      upstream showed in many ways what they though of the feedback they
      got from the broad free software/open source community.

  * a few years ago, netdata inc. was formed and eventually the web-ui
    part was turned proprietary and binary-only. netdata with it's
    "cloud" functionality (more and more functionality was moved from
    netdata to netdata.cloud) turned it into commercial SaaS offering.
    but even before that, the web-ui was a nuissance with all its
    privacy/phone-home issues.

  * netdata 2.x is supposedly containing the agent only (but upstream
    tarballs contain the embedded binary-blob web-ui that need to be
    stripped out) and is still (after some more dfsg stripping) free
    software.

    however, the web-ui is what makes up netdata. just running the agent
    doesn't give you anything and there is no alternative to the web-ui.
    making the web-ui proprietary, there is no component left of netdata
    that is useful for anything without it.

  * netdata inc. can of course choose whichever license they like and
    in Debian, we could still ship netdata (the agent in main, the
    web-ui in non-free) - but I honestly don't see any value in that
    and after all the other constant drama that happened with its
    authors versus the free software/open source community at large in
    the past years, I'm giving up on it.

  * a (differet) alternative is beszel, I'm spending my time on this
    instead (https://github.com/henrygd/beszel/;
    https://bugs.debian.org/1093255).

Regards,
Daniel