Hi everyone. I’m the guy who maintain(s,ed) the Sourceforge mirror.
I got frustrated with download speeds from KiCad’s original Paris-based server to my location and saw that others were having problems as well. I knew Sourceforge had a pretty good CDN for their file release service and wanted to take advantage of that.
So I took the initiative of creating a project, with KiCad’s logo (sorry if TM infringement), making it clear that it is unofficial, and copying all the files from the official server. Then set up a scheduled sync every 12 hours so I could get the nightlies within a reasonable amount of time.
Then Sourceforge wanted to migrate to a new datacenter, breaking shell access for a prolonged period of time. This cause some people to conclude that the mirror was dead already. I planned to upload KiCAD 5.0 manually if it was released during that time, but thankfully SF finally finished their migration and shell access was restored!
…With one crucial roadblock - no outgoing connections allowed! I could no longer sync directly to the download server.
There was no other option but to use myself as an intermediary: I have plenty of space on a NAS to also have a local copy, which would then be pushed up to SF. Thankfully I also have unmetered quota with my ISP and a UPS, so it should always work!
Then KiCad decided to migrate their downloads to AWS S3. Yay! More robust connectivity! Boo! The new web pages broke my scripts! Oh, well. My mirror is probably no longer needed.
Now I wake up this morning to an email from @iabarry who points me to this thread and I see that downloads are still not great.
Well, I know what I’m doing today!
Addendum:
As for trust, I won’t blame you. I’m just a rando on the Internet.
As far as I know, I have no way of proving that the files on SF exactly match the files from CERN. I do know that the Windows builds are signed by Simon Richter.