Anyone who cares about the future of free open source programs or about reducing data mining or about the future of small independent local businesses should not be using any of the Mega Tech Monsters.
Like Microsoft does with Azure and GitHub to build its AI Monster called Copilot, Amazon secretly captures third-party data on its customers’ clients to build products under its own label. In addition to security and privacy problems, AWS condemns you to vendor lock-in and pricing that increases with usage. Amazon Web Services is a dangerous single point of failure that costs businesses more than $100 billion annually.
The current Fabrik zipped package is 67 mb (unzipped about 80 mb ) which makes it about twice as large as the entire Joomla project. In researching why the Fabrik package became so bloated, I discovered that 59 mb out of 80 is the Fabrik Vendor library and 39 mb of this vendor library is aws support.
Eliminating the AWS vendor library not only will save you space on your VPS and make it easier to install Fabrik, but will also put an end to any AWS data mining back doors hidden in the 39 mb AWS library (note that 39 mb is the equivalent of 39,000 pages of code!). Below are the steps to create your own AWS free version of Fabrik.
#1 Download the Fabrik package from this link (Requires registration):
https://fabrikar.com/downloads
#2 Extract the Fabrik package and Fabrik component
Extract the package and open the resulting folder. Then extract and open the first file, which is com_fabrik_xxx.zip. Then open the site folder. Then open the libs folder. Then delete the amazon3 folder. Then delete the com_fabrik_xxx.zip file and zip the revised com_fabrik_xxx folder to replace it. Then delete the revised com_fabrik_xxx folder.
#3 Extract and open the Fab Library Vendor folder
Note that this zipped file is 52.5 mb making it the most bloated folder.
Then open the vendor folder. Then right click on the aws folder and click properties to note that the folder size is 39.1 mb. This is the bloated folder we want to get rid of. So delete this aws folder.
#4 Modify 5 files in the vendor/ composer folder
Unfortunately, deleting the aws bloated folder will result in a fatal error on your website admin pages. We therefore need to modify a few lines in 5 files in the vendor/ composer folder.
Open autoload_classmap.php with the Bluefish Code Editor. Then delete lines 9 to 31. Save and close the file.
Open autoload_files and delete line 15. Save and close the file.
Open autoload_psr4.php and delete line 26. Save and close the file.
Open autoload_static.php and delete Line 16 plus 64 to 67 plus 137 to 140 plus 141 to 163. Save and close the file.
Open installed.php and delete lines 22 to 39. Save and close the file.
Note: We will skip the installed.json file for now. autoload real, namespace, class loader, platform check installed versions OK.
#5 Delete and replace the old Fabrik vendor zipped file
Delete the old Fabrik vendor zipped file. Then zip the edited fabrik vendor folder to replace it. Then rename the package folder and zip it. The zipped package should be reduced from 67.7 mb to 61.1 mb