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Is Freenet Vapourware? Ian Clarke Responds
Sinister writes "Ian Clarke, creator of Freenet, has written an interesting article which gives an overview of where Freenet is, and where it is going. He answers some of the criticism made in some publications against the project's lengthly incubation period and ease-of-use. He talks about the differences between Freenet and other Open Source development projects, and also about the difficulties in managing expectations for one of the most publicised pre-beta free software projects ever. Read the article on the Freenet Project Site."
the censorship issue: one of the points of freenet is to allow web pages to link to files on freenet. as illustrated by the decss case, this is not necessarily any protection against laws. the courts can just make it illegal to link to certain articles/media on free net. on top of that, there was this article explaining new software for isp that allows specialized filtering, even to the point of deneying asll access to freenet, which is discused in the article. so tho ian clarke may not be able to stop freenet once it gets started, major isp and may plaay it safe and block all freenet trafic.
A blog about stuff.
I disagree. Freenet allows distribution of data in such a way that it cannot (reasonably) be determined where the data came from. You can't trace the source. This is invaluable. "Strong encryption and WWW" doesn't give you that. The lack of centralized control and censorship that defines Freenet is the very quality you are passing over lightly.
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Celebrate the finer things in life
considering one of the primary goals of freenet is anonimity (sp?) id ont think that the www and encryption cover that.
What I meant is that the usual reason for anonymity is political persecution. Strong encryption pretty much solves that problem, a lot easier than Freenet. All you need is a "freedom web site" where you accept submissions from anyone and post them. Boom! You're done. The only thing Freenet gives you over this solution is that if the US (for example) suddenly became a fascist state and seized the Freedom Web Site, then it's gone. Freenet, being distributed, wouldn't suffer this problem.
But again, you have to be sufficiently paranoid to believe the US is going to go that direction, and there just isn't going to be enough people that believe that to make Freenet viable.
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Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Have any idea how many commercial and closed-source academic projects fizzle after a small amount of development?
In my experience, the numbers are quite similar -- only difference is that it's hard to find out about the others. In short, this problem isn't unique to open source.
I think everyone can see from the Slashdot blurb what the criticism is: Freenet has taken a long time and still isn't ready for the masses. Ian writes a very insightful analysis of the situation, talking about how innovation takes time, and how the project is still in development, and is still in that pre-release wacky stage when stuff breaks at times.
So I check the comments, and what is everyone raving about?
"Waah - it's hard to install!"
"It's never going to take off! The version I downloaded three months ago doesn't have animated icons!"
Idiots.
People, we sit here in angst about how Open Source isn't very innovative, that all we do all day is copy the work other people have done. Well, here's something no one else has managed to pull off: a decentralized P2P network with privacy and anonymity built in. So now we're trying to kill it off with criticism because it's taking longer to write than the IRC client your roommate wrote in a night of caffeine-induced frenzy.
Here's a news flash for you: Creating something new takes time. It's not as easy to do as copy other people's good ideas. So the fact that, say, GNOME, or Linux, or whatever was done in less time is irrelevant: for a fair comparison, you should factor in the 15+ years of tweaking to the GUI done by Apple and Microsoft into the GNOME timetable, or the 30+ years of development on Unix into Linux's. For a more pertinent example of how good Freenet is doing, go compare Freenet to Unix circa 1971, or the Apple Lisa, or Windows 1.1.
So, if you're the type to download something, play with it, then slam it because it doesn't work, let me give you some advice:
Stay away from Freenet. Far away. Go play with Napster or Gnutella. Come back and play when the Freenet 1.0 announcement comes across Freshmeat.
And, for the love of Mike, shut up.
I think you have underestimated freenet. It has alot of niches that it fills. One: obviously it can't be shut down so people can depend on it for the long hall - unlike scour or napster(although I am sure that Napster will be around for a long time and is not as vololtile as many people think - (journalists) ). Right now, I can get mp3's from audio galaxy but I can't get movies from anywhere efficiently. IRC is pretty difficult sometimes with the overloaded f-serves and whatnot. Gnutella cannot scale well. Encryption and being anonymouse are not why freenet is a big deal, it just helps with the concept of file sharing that is very distributed and resilient. The average joecool@aol.com doesn't care about encryption but I'll bet he does care about getting a DVD ripper that uses DeCSS or a movie that's still in the theatre, or a very popular new song without any waiting, and all from the same place.
And Napster has a great interface, simple and elegant, not bloated and easy to use.
This Wiki Feeds You TV and Anime - vidwiki.org
Corporations also make mistakes, have dumb ideas, learn. But they do it in secret. Publicly they act very focused and confident - the behavior of a used car salesman, not a scientist.
As for follow-up effort, it's usually not as fun as creation. Therein lies a major weakness.
Vaporware? I've been running a node for almost a year now, on and off. I've been patiently waiting for client applications to emerge, especially music file sharing. There is a reason why I've been patient: I can use Napster or Gnutella NOW. Soon I don't think that will be the case. The legal system will eventually bear down on everyone doing so. All will be forced way underground. Freenet gives one a way to be 'underground' yet still linked to others. Kind of like the .mp3 underground railroad.
PGP and anonymous remailers have their place, but interest has waned. The killer app- music, had no use for them. Freenet is waiting.
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I suspect that the implementation of such a feature would be enourmously difficult, and not for technical reasons, but sociological.
.com suffix be dropped as well.
:// they remember being spoken in radio ads in 1995), let alone something as nonsensical and impronouncible as a Freenet key, is certainly futile, not to mention of limited use for even clued masses.
t al-gee-small-zee-wye-oh-arr-..."
It stands to scrutiny that much of the wired world is quite braindead. The arcanity of entering trailing / (let alone an actual filename) of an HTTP URL has been deemed too intense for the masses. The "http://" prefix is also too complicated.
Nevermind the fact that URLs were supposed to make things easier for the populace to understand. There simply aren't enough protocols in common use for to bother distinguishing which one is wanted. People, even geeks, don't even browse FTP servers much these days, which places the URL one step further toward complete disuse.
People, nowadays, just enter "cnn.com" into the top of the window, if they even know how; I suspect a great many hits to http://cnn.com/ are the results of people entering it into the search box of their respective default page (either MSN or Netcenter).
In any case, that HTTP is wanted is assumed by the browser software, while the trailing slash is filled in by the web server. And the entered text, "cnn.com", is mostly understandable to most drones, though the majority would probably prefer that the
In this state of affairs, expecting the general populace to be able to handle a new protocol (and the dread
"Ok. That program I was talking about is at eff-nee-ee-tee-colon-slash-slash-eff-cee-pee-capi
Yeah, right.
Kid-proof tablet..
I cannot build a bridge--I haven't the education for it. This does not mean that I whine that engineers have yet to build a footbridge or a car-bridge over the nearest chasm--I either pay for it myself, form a syndicate to pay for it, or do without. Sic Freenet--if one cannot contribute, don't complain.
I'm sure that the fellows who work on it would love donations. Who knows, with enough they might even be able to fund full-time development.
Hello Ian -
I read your reply here and your other grumpy post further down. From your own FAQ:
2.2. Is Freenet searchable?
No search mechanism has yet been implemented
As I used it, you have to finsert a file with a key name, from the users point of view effectively a ''filepath'' into the ''freenet filesystem''. Then separately you have to connect to an index server and enter the same filepath so that others can retrieve the file. I have never heard of KSK@Aardvark before your post, and it is not mentioned in your FAQ. A search on Google turns nothing up either. As Joe User, how am I meant to find out that KSK@Aardvark even exists, let alone what it is? If I was a journalist, would that be enough to make me too stupid to use Freenetin your opinion?
Anyhow, consequently I have no idea what is KSK@Aardvark or really what you are going on about with offering hyperlinking in place of automated indexing. A digest of manually entered indexes wouldn't seem to solve the problem that my post was looking at, discovery of content like Google allows for the web. Imagine if Google was just this huge flat file containing a billion web page filenames that you had to download each time and then search it locally; that's what you will end up with on these key indexes.
Note I already said the developers deserve praise for what they have done so far, it is a big job and it basically works, and it is a great foundation to be taken a lot further.
Even people that you have unfortunately written off as idiots have different experiences and points of view as users to you as the developer that you should understand if a wide range of people can end up using the end product. Although you may be exhausted, and cannot resolve it by yourself, you should still admit privately that there is more to be understood and gained from this torrent of feedback telling you the same things over and over than ''they are all idiots''.
Writing people off as idiots because they are telling you how to improve your product is one warning bell, and this ''add it on later'' handwaving about the searching is the other. Generally Great things have all their legs architected in at the get-go. However, I wish you...
Happy new year and best of luck
-Andy
I've been wont to whack Freenet in my own mind, but I had a revelation while reading Ian's piece: to have a good open-source project--that is, one that is downloaded and worked on by many good coders--you have to do a lot of promotion for it. Attracting the critical mass of coders as well as users is a process that doesn't happen overnight.
If you're trying to do something really unique or complex--as Freenet is attempting to do--you have to get a lot of very good people interested in it. Then they have to see where you're going and add their ideas or help change the direction a wee bit.
I liken it to a ship with an unbelievably large steering wheel: you need more than one person to turn it. In fact, you need several strong people to turn it. And all you do when you're waiting for enough people to help you turn it is risk the naysayers saying, "They'll never turn it."
I don't see the "market" for Freenet, but I don't know that I would have seen the market for recorded music 140 years ago, either. I don't have the code-fu to help them out, so I'm not even going to get involved--until they're ready for me to be.
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-- Geof F. Morris
I think people are missing something fairly fundamental when discussing the failure of FreeNet to gain buzz and hence mindshare. Java the concept is great. Java the language is great. Java the fully working and transparent VM behind the scenes of every real Winblows/Linux/BSD/BeOS/Solaris is a figment of Java developers' imaginations.
If only it were not so, but it is. In many cases the reason for failure of the concept is trivial --- merely bad CLASSPATH or fonts or Netscape crapness --- but that's enough to make it a failure for the masses. Despite the protestations of Java fans that it's a success right now, the key point is being missed: it's only a success for you, and not transparent for non-fans. Reality sucks, sorry. [You can remedy such failures so easily with VM defaults but you don't. Why? --- A question to the Java community.]
Does this mean that FreeNet has no future? No, in my view, because the issues that it addresses are likely to become ever more important over time, give the lag between realtime and the onset of coercion from the corrupt corporate, legal, and political spheres. It has a future, because in due course the confluence of several factors will give it the boost it needs: it will gain the apps and GUIs it needs to appeal to the masses, and it will be reimplemented in native code so that it actually runs everywhere for the ordinary non-tech man/woman with a computer, not just for you.
FreeNet developers don't despair. You're laying the groundwork, not the final edifice. Once you have something approaching a spec that won't change too much, we'll reimplement in slotted C (OK, probably via a C++ phase) and FreeNet will become universal. Meanwhile, keep doing your good work and ignore the detractors.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
But who would be held accountable? the user? an advantage would be that people could prevent "bad" things from being saved on their hard drives that they wouldn't want to distribute (child porn and such). But yes, it would would put a damper on some of the advantages that freenet offers, although for most things it wouldn't even matter.
This Wiki Feeds You TV and Anime - vidwiki.org
I think freenet will succeed for 2 reasons:
1. No single point of failure
2. Encryption
International banks will love this. When it gets beyond version 1.0, they will start using it.
Howdy! There is currently at least 1 C(++) port of Freenet in active development. Also, there used to be a node in Python (IIRC) but it is still stuck in the 0.2 world of Freenet. It will be updated in the future most likely. Thnx, Fuller
#BBS-Files on DALNet IRC, Come and Chat about the good old days of BBSing!
Howdy!
There is currently works in progress for some plugins for both IE and Netscape.
oh, and the URI for anything is Freenet:KSK@index.html (or CHK or SSK or SVK) etc.
Currently, FProxy is a decent interface for your browser!
Thnx,
Fuller
#BBS-Files on DALNet IRC, Come and Chat about the good old days of BBSing!
"it is a shame you do not want to do anything about the problem you so skillfully pointed out."
Yes, it's a shame that not everybody is a programmer. I'm not a programmer, does that mean I can't voice my opinion on Freenet? Everyone has money (to varying amounts) they can donate to charity, but not everybody knows enough C or Java or perl to contribute to an OSS project.
Call me crazy, but Ian Clarke's statement smacks of elitism.
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The real Raunchola isn't cool enough to have any imposters
No Sale.
He needs to fix one of these complaints, which would help the other problems, but doesn't. How long has freenet been going? Quite a while. The 10 year linux comparison is BS. Thats a f*cking OS not peer to peer file sharing program.
It is impossible to use. It's like dialysis. The only reason you would use it is if you desperatly needed it.
His response was, "Of course its easy to use. Just start posting all your problems on the newsgroup and within several hours of each post, you'll get a response. So all combined it will take you 2 days of fucking with it, just so you can do a search on a system that has no content."
I am 100% behind the idea of freenet. Hell, I am a java programmer and offered serveral times to help them. (Never got a response.) But there are some serious problems with their development scheme or managment there of, for this thing to be so unfinished after so long.
- I like pudding.
Further, I don't recall accusing anyone of being an idiot for making a constructive suggestion about how Freenet's usability could be improved, in fact, I do my best to encourage this. Could you perhaps provide some evidence of this?
As for our "add it on later handwaving" about searching, do you suppose that when version 1.0 of Linux was released, it contained every feature that might be implemented at some point in the future? Software is built in stages, it doesn't make sense to implement searching in Freenet before the lower-level stuff is working well. As for "great things having all their legs architected at the get-go", where was Gnome architected in Linux at the get-go? Sure there was room for it to be implemented, just as there is room in Freenet for searching, but we can't do everything at once, and would fail if we tried.
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What about adding freenet as a protocol to web-browsers, so you could type
to access content? Would this be hard to implement?What will ultimately kill Freenet is not ease of use, lack of searching, or technical problems, although these problems are certainly significant and potential killers. What will ultimately doom it is lack of interest.
For Freenet to be really successful, it must have a critical mass of servers to store and distribute the load. But this requires popularity, and Freenet is just not going to be that interesting to the average person.
For a software system (whatever it is) to become very popular, it must fill an untapped need. Consider Napster -- Napster became popular not because it had a good interface (it doesn't), or that it's great software engineering (it isn't), but because it fulfilled a burning need: A source for MP3 files.
What need does Freenet fulfill? Primary a perceived need on the part of the engineers for privacy and anonymity. Now, this is probably a significant need for places like China, but this is exactly the place where Freenet is not going to get a lot of servers. In places like the US, the vast majority of people do not perceive a need for Freenet.
In other words, the intensity of the need is inversely proportional to the ability to provide server space and bandwidth.
I understand Freenet's purpose, but I personally have zero interest in contributing. And I think Freenet is going to find that there are lot less paranoids out there than they think. The fact is, strong encryption and the WWW filfills 99.9% of Freenet's goals.
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Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Almost noone uses it.
People start using it for illegal things.
It becomes popular.
Simultaniously -
It becomes massively overloaded.
It is harshly litigated against.
It fizzles.
Almost noone uses it.
Cycnics`R`Us,
FatPhil
-- Real Men Don't Use Porn. -- Morality In Media Billboards
Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
depending on the country you live in you can voice your opinion about anything you want. voicing your opinion about a problem is really pointless unless you are willing to do something about it. you dont have to be a programmer to contribute to a oss project. you can contribute by:
submitting detailed bug reports
providing documentation
design a support
i believe the free software foundation takes donations.
to name a few.
use LaTeX? want an online reference manager that
-- john
I can understand that the leader is feeling a bit moaned at and undervalued, the stuff does work at the heart of it and he and the other people working on it do deserve credit for it.
As some who is working on stuff over Freenet (through the new Everything Over Freenet project; check it out at eof.sourceforge.net) and has been on the mailing lists for about a year, I can tell you that most of the developers and mailing list regs hate Freenet's publicity. The project really hasn't accomplished that much and the media is screaming over it.
The problem that they don't seem to have addressed in their efforts to dodge censorship is that they will ultimately make the posession and propogation of the key names themselves illegal, undoing all of the good work they have planned for. For example, it will be the posession or use of the key name ''secrets/food/soylent green'' that will be used to repress people who might like to look up the document belonging to the key.
This is actualy already solved to some extent. Let me give a crash course on the types of keys on Freenet (a more complete list is at http://www.freenetproject.org/index.php?page=keys) :
KHK--These were deprecated in 0.3 and replaced by KSKs (see bellow) due to similar problems that you described above. KSKs now do the same job (i.e., have a guessable, human-readable string for a key name), but much more securly.
KSK--Provides a human-readable, guessable key. Despite being more secure then KHKs, they are not as secure as CHKs (see bellow). Its suggested use is as a redirect to a CHK. This is accomplished by setting the CLI option "-autoRedirect" for inserts to "yes". That is also the default behavior for FProxy.
CHK--Is not human-readable. Instead, its a cryptographic hash of the data inside.
There are a few others, such as SVK and SSK, but they're not as important for this disccusion (see the link above for more detials on them if you're interested).
So, lets say KSK@how-to-build-a-nuke.txt (note: Freenet URIs are formed like this: keytype@key) is a redirect to CHK@fjdskalf879934q2823rl,ekf;qnieof (I don't think I have the correct number of charecters for the CHK's crypto hash, I just type it randomly, but it doesn't matter). If a given node operator has their house broken into by Them and their node searched for a specific key name, they may find the KSK name, but that doesn't mean the operator was actualy holding that key (its just like a link on the web . . . oh no :). Nor does it mean that he had requested the data, much less had been the one to put it there in the first place.
There are a few things that Freenet needs to get rid of, but was known all along that they were just crutches to be gotten out of latter. The first is key indecies, which list names of keys. The second is inform.php, which is how a new node discovers other nodes already in the network. The latter will require being replaced by searching, and the former will be replaced by "discovery probes". The inform.php is the more serious of the two and will probably be fixed first (should be in 0.5 at the latest). Searching is a lower priority so it may not be touched until we get closer to 1.0 (some predict even longer, others a lot shorter. I think it will be there in 0.5).
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Not a typewriter
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Criticizing an Open Source project for their level of progress is akin to criticizing someone else for not giving enough to charity, while giving none yourself.
There are alot of people jumping on the open source bandwagon who are wanting something of quality, that is free and they want it quickly. you can can always get two of the three, but which do you settle for. this applies to those who would criticize slow release times. the source is there if you want it quicker please spend your effort contributing and not complaining.
i personally prefer free and high quality.
use LaTeX? want an online reference manager that
-- john
dude, screw the lurkers.. we think you're doin' a great job and if any of these people had ever experienced the slightest amount of censorship they would think so too. Keep up the good work.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Democracy doesn't work.. tell us something new. But if you've got a better idea, we'd all like to see the plan.
How we know is more important than what we know.
The info at that link suggests that the C++ implementation is not available except to developers:
Don't think about installing Whiterose yet, unless you are interrested in developing it. If so mail <agl@linuxpower.org>.
The bit about working against only particular versions of the Java-based node is worrying, as it suggests that non-Java implementations will always be trailing the Java one as some kind of "master reference". There needs to be an implementation-independent Freenet spec available so that development of non-Java versions can proceed without reference to the Java one, otherwise tail-chasing is going to make the job of alternative developers a never-ending and thankless one, subservient to the whims of the Java-based developers.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
Peer to peer issues arise becuase, let's face it, the majority of internet users really don't know how to do that much with a computer these days. Especially in the home market.
Take your family (i'll take mine for this example):
Dad, early adopter of technology, but a bit slow to pick it up. Still has patience to pick up and read manual. Will eventually learn it if it's something that is useful and more functional than his current modus operandi
Mom, uses it because she can email friends - still a novelty to her. Has some patience, but gets pissed when it just doesn't work right (e.g. Netscape 6 email client)
Me - piss off parents by knowing key commands within 10 minutes of using any software. Regularly think it's in the best interests of the family to overhaul machines.
Sister - "Where's the power switch?!?" mention the word "RAM" and she just says "I just want to type papers and surf the net damnit!!!"
Little brother- knows the key commands in five minutes. Damn tech kid
So the issue is that a piece of software needs to be easily usable to a wide variety of netizens. It needs to be invisible to the user. They should say "give me this" and there it should be. Napster does this fairly well, and with such a large user base, especially in the college level, it's easier for someone who is more like my sister to have a friend teach them what to do in a short amount of time.
Freenet won't be sucessful until it can make that interaction layer invisible. As much as I'd love to see a console spitting off commands as I implement them in the GUI, most users have no desire or use for this. They don't want to know WHY their car works, they just want it to work. And they don't care why it broke down, just fix it already.
Sad to say, but most users out there expect computers to be like cars, but know at the same time that a crash is only a keystroke away.
On that note, File, save.
// john athayde
# x@boboroshi.com
# http://www.boboroshi.com/
// john athayde
# x@boboroshi.com
# http://www.boboroshi.com/
I had a good look at Freenet the other week; so far they have done a nice job on an interesting project. I can understand that the leader is feeling a bit moaned at and undervalued, the stuff does work at the heart of it and he and the other people working on it do deserve credit for it.
The problem that they don't seem to have addressed in their efforts to dodge censorship is that they will ultimately make the posession and propogation of the key names themselves illegal, undoing all of the good work they have planned for. For example, it will be the posession or use of the key name ''secrets/food/soylent green'' that will be used to repress people who might like to look up the document belonging to the key.
For this reason they will have to end up with a searchable filespace with an end-to-end encrypted Freenet Google equivalent. Then people can nudge-nuge wink-wink about soylent and cause people to perform research using Freenet rather than have to deliver discrete ''freenet URLs''.
(PS Reality Master 101, you're such a Karma whore)
There is working code available. There are even Debian packages available.
So, piss off.
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"Where, where is the town? Now, it's nothing but flowers!"
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I'm sick of all the people whining about how "freenet is hard to use, that's why it's unpopular" or "Java sucks! Wah Waaah Wah!" or, the MOST common, "Napster/Gnutella already does this, why should they bother?"
Freenet is not just a program, its laying the groundwork for a *standard* to anonymously use and contribute to the Internet. Its a platform, folks, not just an application. Think about it, freenet can be used for more than just your standard war3z, pr0n, and mp3z that currently populate Napster and Gnutella. In the future, you could use it for anything from web browsing, to whatever your imagination can create. All that stands in the way is your willingness and ability to code new and different ways of using the Freenet protocol. And that's what the Freenet Project needs right now, anyway.
So please, stop whining and start helping instead, if it interests you enough to complain.
Friends don't let friends use multiple inheritance.
Right now, the top-most article - "But seraching is the key" - is by someone who doesn't seem to grasp the concept of hyperlinking (something I specifically mention in the article). The second article is by someone who doesn't think that there is a market for freedom of speech ("Freenet's biggest flaw..."). Fortunately, below that there is some more positive stuff.
It reminds me of a story I heard about the difference between the Irish, and the Americans:
In America people look up at the wealthy guy who lives on top of the hill, and say "some day, I am going to be like him".
In Ireland, people look up at the wealthy guy who lives on top of the hill, and say "some day, I am going to kill that rich bastard".
I think that if you swapped the average slashdot reader for the Irish in that story, it would be equally true.
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While SourceForge provides a hell of a lot of nice ideas and schematics for some great tools, its sad to see efforts aren't followed through on a lot of those great ideas.
it is funny you would type that on a message board system, that takes more hits a day than most hardcore hippies, and is also registered at sourceforge
http://sourceforge.net/projects/slashcode/
use LaTeX? want an online reference manager that
-- john