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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."
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.
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.
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
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)
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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