Is this going to be truly free and open source or is this one of those situations where for now it's "free" and then in the future people get slapped with some ridiculous pricing and/or license changes?
I don't mind paying for software but I'm starting to get a bit sick of investing my time and money on software that is just looking to generate buzz and then the other shoe drops...
In my opinion this happens because people start projects as a side project, then they get attention and need more and more time. So either you somehow invest more time (work less on your normal job) or get more contributors/ a team. The first option is happening more often, so you need income to replace your normal job where we mostly end with your described situation.
They state that they will have paid tiers on the site [0]:
"At its heart, Spacedrive will always be open source and free. However, we do offer optional paid services to boost your experience. For instance, with a subscription to our cloud service, you get an encrypted database and preview media backup, file transfer options, ample storage, and backup plans. These are perfect for individuals, teams, and businesses looking for better collaboration.³
Connections between devices in your network are always peer-to-peer, and never go through our servers. We do not have access to your data, and we never will. Our cloud service is completely optional, and you can use Spacedrive without it."
Love Peter Watts' work but be warned that his writing is super depressing (in a good way), specially his Rifters Trilogy. My favorites are still Blindsight and it's follow-up, Echopraxia. The ideas on those books about sentient life are eye opening and something I still think is heavily debated in the scientific community.
Of his catalogue, I like Blindsight best probably, it's one of those fundamental science fiction novels that asks a new question and stays with you for a long time, without being too cerebral.
I'm a bit conflicted about these books. The ideas are super interesting but the characters seem very "cardboard-like". Also they are bit too long and by the 3rd book I didn't care anymore... Still, pretty interesting on their own.
How's Wayland + Gnome working for fractional scaling in HiDPI screens? Last time I tried some applications like Chrome, Firefox and others would be all blurry.
In the past I've used Hashicorp Vault to handle this kind of situation. Granted, it's an additional piece of infrastructure to manage but Vault has been pretty solid for this kind of situation and others where you need to safely manage secrets.