The public dissemination of data is an integral part of the life sciences. In the field of proteomics too, data sharing has taken off over the last few years, with the first downstream uses of these data quickly gaining prominence. At the same time, the recent unfortunate demise of two repositories, NCBI Peptidome and ProteomeCommons Tranche, has shown the frailty of such data gathering efforts. Heroic efforts by the PRIDE and Peptidome teams to rescue the Peptidome data have now ensured their continued availability to the field, and alternatives have already been put in place for Tranche. But with public data increasingly at the hub of the life sciences, it is a good time to look at the proteomics data ecosystem in some more detail. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.