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Comment by dharmab | Hacker News Reader

The Python foundation can see all the dependencies you download from PyPI, and NPM can see all the dependencies you download from NPM/Yarn. This isn't unusual for a package manager.

If you prefer, you can run your own proxy and configure the Go command to use it instead.

Private modules don't use the mirror.

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Unlike the ones you mentioned, Go doesn't have a central repository. The go.mod contains references to git repositories or local folders:

https://go.dev/doc/modules/gomod-ref

Not sure why a proxy is needed.

It's needed to provide checksums for each module. It also significantly improves performance and prevents a left-pad situation.

https://go.dev/blog/module-mirror-launch

These are GIT repositories, they have their own cryptographically unique identifiers. No need to send your data to a third-party to get it confirmed.

Maybe I'm missing something, but this whole operation feels like a huge infrastructure paid by Google for something that is not needed.

> cryptographically unique

Git uses SHA1 which is pretty far from cryptographically secure. It’s unlikely that’s the sole reason for having a separate checksum database though.

Doing some searching around online, it seems like git introduced sha256 support several years ago.

Only for some local operations- git protocol still uses SHA-1 for compatibility with old clients, and existing SHA-1 objects in old repositories aren't converted.

Git history can be rewritten or deleted e.g. by the git rebase command. The mirror's checksum DB is independent and prevents your build from breaking or being altered if a dependency is manipulated or deleted.

As sibling comment notes, Git's hashes are not secure: https://shattered.it

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