Slashdot Mirror
Freenet's First Employee
An unnamed reader writes: "The Freenet project's first employee started work today. Oskar Sandberg, one of Freenet's core developers, will be working full-time on Freenet for the next two months, his living expenses being paid for by donations to the Freenet project. Freenet has come a long way in-terms of usability in the last few months, Oskar will initially be working on the next major release, 0.4, which will bring significant performance, security, and usability improvements to Freenet.
The original announcement is here." (And here's where you can sweeten the pot, too.)
Freenet isn't the type of thing that your favorite Big Above-The-Law International Corporation would want to invest in.
The fact that donations can make this happen really demonstrates the desire for people to have, finally, a Free Net.
These guys would be well-served to investigate the "Dining Cryptographers" problem, which is a way that a group of peers can transmit information to each-other but remain anonymous (within the group) with mathematical certainty. Again, it isn't very scalable, and is subject to DOS attacks, but it does work.
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I would certainly be interested to hear why you think that it is more anonymous and more scalable than Freenet? Nothing I can see supports your claim.
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Having said that, the usage guide you point to isn't actually the usage guide at all, the actual usage guide you are thinking of is at http://freenetproject.org/quickguide/ and has been for months, and AFAIK there are no references to "fools" anywhere - so I really don't understand what you are talking about.
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Also note that some ISPs, including Earthlink, are refusing to cave to pressure from these self-appointed IP police. In fact, many of these companies are going out of business.
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Are there any? I see a lot of talk about freedom of speech, but when you look at what the software actually does, it looks like it's really just designed to help people trade warez anonymously. And no, this isn't flamebait. I want to know what genuinely legitimate uses Freenet has.
I sent in my $10, just hoping others will do the same...
:)
If everyone posts an "I donated $xx" amount message, we can raise money for them at the same time as we break the previous Slashdot postings record.
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When in danger or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout. --Robert A. Heinlein
Wow, I can't believe the amount of cynicism already appearing in this story. I just chipped in $10 towards the project because I'd like to see it be developed further.
That's what separates the people who use Linux because it's free (as in beer) from the people who believe in free (as in speech) software, and are willing to fund further development of it.
Sure, ten bucks isn't a lot, it's about two lunches for me, but hopefully if more Slashdotters contribute a few bucks, they can come out with better FreeNet servers & clients.
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When in danger or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout. --Robert A. Heinlein
They're only paying him $2500 total for two months full-time work? That's just sad. Doesn't exactly make me want to sign up for a open source project anytime soon.
Cheers,
I checked Infoanarchy.org's queue this morning and this news story is extremely interesting. Check the sourceforge page here.
After reading the overview of that project, it looks much safer and more anonymous than Freenet (it probably even scales better too).
How is this much different from the web? How do you find something? Someone *tells* you where it is (in the form of a link). In freenet's place, it would be a key.
It's easy to walk around the web because of HTML. NOT because of http/web servers/etc.
That's the point. Freenet is a storage/server medium, not the user interface element.
I don't worry about the ease-of-use issue that much. Look at the net, look at linux... it will happen.
Of course he also pointed out the untraceability of where the file originated, but the dynamic and ever-fluid nature of exactly where the physical file might be was what captured my imagination at the time.
Thus it seems that applications with geographic overtones might be conceived as the truly legitimate ones. For example, if Derrick May and Juan Atkins could have posted MP3s to Freenet, they would have quickly seen techno take off in Europe; that's where they would have headed to do their live shows. (Of course they did that anyway, but by tracking record sales, a somewhat slower process.)
Similarly, any kind of culture-based phenomenon could exploit this: an author in Maine finds that Samoans can't get enough of his stuff; Romania goes gaga over a tricky Brazilian beat; people in West Germany start a political party based on ideas that first popped up in New Zealand -- you get the idea.....
DNA is a Turing machine. You, however, being dynamic and emergent, are not.
oh?
Freenet coordinator Ian Clarke's side venture Uprizer says different. He scored
$4mil in April.
Uprizer looks like its trying to compete in the CDN realm. The idea is a good one, Freenet has a number of unknowns in it, ie content expiration, that wouldn't make it suitable for certain business applications. It probably trades off some of Freenet's anonymity requirements for certainity. Similar to the idea of businesses not using the Internet for applications that need guarenteed data rates, they don't use the commodity Internet they buy a dedicated circuit.
Seriously, it knocks me out when people say stuff like this. If free speech and freedom of the press can be outlawed, then don't we have ALL THE MORE NEED for an alternative publishing system? If you're this concerned, then you need to get Freenet going DAMN QUICK, man.
As to the illegality: there are a number of ways to make Freenet run "under the radar," such as using steganography to camouflage Freenet protocol messages as, say, mail messages, or HTTP pr0n downloads, or anything else.
That's not on the Freenet development roadmap for a while, but it's definitely something that's been suggested.
Evan Prodromou | evan@prodromou.name | http://evan.prodromou.name/
Freenet has become a fine platform for Web publishing, for example. If you've got a Web site (ANY Website -- even pictures of your cat) you should REALLY REALLY read the Website publishing HOWTO. It gives step-by-step instructions on how to put your site into Freenet.
Remember, back in the day, the World Wide Web and other Internet services had the same outlaw reputation that peer-to-peer systems like Freenet have right now. It was only because many "ordinary" people put their "ordinary" content on the Web that it became an acceptable, in fact indispensible, computing platform.
We can do that with Freenet, if we work at it. But it takes thousands of individual efforts to make it happen. If you think there's a potential for a bad future for Freenet, you need to start helping, rather than resigning yourself to Yet More Totalitarian Bullshit.
Evan Prodromou | evan@prodromou.name | http://evan.prodromou.name/
So, "Freenet for Fools" was written by a Windows user. I think it was originally "Freenet for D*mmies," but because of trademark issues the name was changed.
Evan Prodromou | evan@prodromou.name | http://evan.prodromou.name/
I don't know if the future of Free Software projects is really in donation-based organizations like Freenet, but it seems like it gives a nice "push" to projects that are in high-velocity development phases.
I especially think that the hiring of an employee at non-profit wages is a great way to spend the donation money. We all want a better, faster, stronger, more anonymous, less attackable Freenet, and I think this will really help. Not to mention that Oskar is a pretty OK programmer, despite being an irascible grouch. B-)
As per the low wages: I think the wages are just right, actually. They're enough that we keep Oskar on a leash for a few months, but they're not enough that the rest of the developers get jealous and slack off from working.
One more thing: people interested in anonymity should check out EOF, a collection of applications like mail, news, apt (!!), etc. that work over Freenet. Good shit.
Evan Prodromou | evan@prodromou.name | http://evan.prodromou.name/
You mean, like freegle?
I want to see this guy working on The Revolution. Is there a bio for him? Do they have a "current life status" describing his computer hardware at home, any pets, cars, friends, and the current contents of his refrigerator? Do they have him hooked up to record vital statistics? I hope they make some pretty charts out of them.
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Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
From the Freenet devl mailing list this morning- I would just like to note that my schoolterm has ended now, so I am starting my fulltime work on Freenet as of today. I plan to work pretty much non-stop until the fall term begins, which is on the 27th of August, making my employment a convenient 2½ months. I would just like to assure everybody that I am taking this opportunity very seriously, and I will work absolutely as hard as I would under ordinary employment conditions (harder actually, since I don't believe in stuff like sleep and weekends when hacking on Freenet). My first priority will be getting back in the loop with Tavin's work on the experimental branch, and getting the remaining necessary features (basically announcement) in and working as soon as possible. After that I will try to balance my time between enhancing and debugging the 0.4 for code for public usability together with the other 0.4 coders and experimenting on the routing and caching modifications that have been discussed here lately. Plans, like always, are subject to revision though. -- 'DeCSS would be fine. Where is it?' 'Here,' Montag touched his head. 'Ah,' Granger smiled and nodded. Oskar Sandberg oskar@freenetproject.org
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Colin Davis
As would I.
Check out this example of what I see as a Bad Idea.
If the goal is to bring anonymous publication into the mainstream, example filenames like "Britney Spears Felch.jpg" are... well, unhelpful.
Funny as hell? Yes, to the author, and speaking as one with a sick sense of humor, I thought it was pretty damn funny too.
But is it the first thing you'd want your Congresscritter to see when he decides to find out "what this free net thing is all about?" after the local Fundie-sponsored lobby group complains that FreeNet has to be banned for the sake of the chilllldrun?
C'mon, folks, let's get real here.
milosevic-evidence.jpg - good
95_theses.txt - even better
britfelch.jpg - not bloody likely
Freenet is a large-scale peer-to-peer network which pools the power of member computers around the world to create a massive virtual information store open to anyone to freely publish or view information of all kinds.
That would really be cool if they can pull it off. Every Slashdot user and anonymous coward should immediately write a check to those people. May the RIAA and other freedom destroyers tremble in fear! May they have horrible visions of empty bank accounts and past due legal bills! May their power to restrict the freedom of others dwindle exponentially! Go Freenet!
IP laws are unnatural. They can only be enforced with the use of powerful police states. Demand liberty! Nothing less!
Amen. I just gave too. It's funny, I've been a user/supporter of Freenet for a while, but it took this whole "herd mentality" to actually get me to give some money. Nice to know others are doing it too.
Can your IM do this?
Nobody could prosecute you for having curtains on your windows, just as I doubt that anyone could prosecute you simply for running Freenet.
Obviously, though, you could be prosecuted for having a meth lab. Just as you could be prosecuted for keeping all the equipment for a meth lab in your house and deliberately letting others use this equipment. That's exactly what Freenet's doing: you're opening up your computer for others to use to transmit data. In other words, you become an accessory to crime.
Put differently, you won't be prosecuted for running Freenet. You'll be prosecuted when your Freenet transmits illegal data, as is inevitable given Freenet's design.
Stuff like this is why I love PayPal. A few bucks here and there, takes about ten seconds to actually do the transaction. Very cool. Hopefully more Open Source/Free Software projects can use such a model to fund full time developers.
I worked with some folks from Romania a while back. $1000 a month there is about five times the national average salary there and if you pay them in dollars it goes a lot farther since inflation runs in the 20+% range. In a global economy, you can stretch you dollar a lot farther.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Have you used freenet? If not, get a client and fire it up - it's not terribly difficult to do. During the two or three days I played around with it, I found:
The client that comes with the freenet package that I got works as a mini-webserver: that is, you can connect to your box on port 8081 through your browser of choice. From then on, it's just like using the web.
Try it out - it's like having your own private, anonymous internet. So if you're asking about legitimate uses, it's like asking about legitimate uses to the ordinary web. Sure, you could use the web to trade warez, but you could also put up a personal home page.
-Denor
I suppose all those people using PGP (or GnuPG) must have "bad" things in them. I suppose any sort of encryption must be used for "bad" things now that you mention it.
The fact is that the internet was not designed for privacy and it is only natural that people will want their privacy. I don't have curtins on my windows because I have methlab or something, I just don't want people to be able to look in my house all the time. FreeNet and other encrypted/private communication mechanisms are just a natural extension of the internet: people want to communicate instantly and have instant access to information, but sometimes they want it to be private.
Things you think are in the Constitution, but are not.
when most isp's/cable/dsl providers prohibit you from running servers?
Walking Freenet is not quick and painless. It can be an agonisingly slow wait for a document to arrive, and the actual act of pulling the document affects how the document is cached. That's why searching should be a protocol. At the very least it should be possible to pull a document without raising it's importance.
I donated a while back when they first setup the donation system for Freenet. Look guys, donating $10 to $20 costs you as much as one of those bargin-bin video games, but it gives you so much more: hope for a free network. I wonder what Carnivore (or whatever that packet sniffer that the feds are using is called) thinks of Freenet.
Yup. A nice white t-shirt with the unofficial Freenet logo emblazed on it: concentric circles radiating out from the middle.
Synonyms: see bullseye.
It makes it so much easier for the MPAA / RIAA goons to target, er, identify you....
Of course, it's much better to donate by credit card, than to not donate at all. :>
Also, please note that your contributions are tax-deductible (at least in the USA).
-- Agthorr
I kinda hate to break this to you, but Oskar isn't exactly going to be doing grunt work. He's been in Freenet development, IIRC, for about two years and has always done the Ugly Innards of Freenet. He wrote documentation once "when I was young and stupid" (so he says). There's no way he's going to be doing grunt work. From what I've read on the Freenet mailing lists, he'll be working on getting the next version of Freenet in working order, particularly a new system of node announcement which will do away with Freenet's last centralization (inform.php).
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Not a typewriter
Freenet is a darn good thing, and something we should all support in whatever ways we can. We MUST preserve free speech (not neccessarilly free-as-in-'FIRE!' speech, of course) on the net, if nothing else, and Freenet garauntees it.
I would like to entreat the guiding hands behind Freenet, however, to consider the greater audience out there. Yes, the project is working with Open Source tools, and that's a good thing! However, it must be accessable to everyone. They can't afford to alienate any potential users of Freenet. For that reason, calling the directory that the Windows usage guide in, 'Freenet for Fools,' could be considered insulting to Windows users.
I know, this is /., where anyone who relies entirely on a Windows machine is a chump, and just SO needs flaming change to get on the clue bus, hurled at him at supercavitating speeds. Come on, let's think about this maturely. I hate Microsoft as much as any other person who's had to clean up after BSODs (sometimes I can see a blue residue on the screen after rebooting...) but MS machines are Out There, and people will be using them.
Freenet essentially calling a fair amount of their user base 'fools' to their face will just turn those users away. "Oh, more elitist Linux users," they'll sigh. "If I join Freenet I'll just be exposed to more of that elitist crap. Screw it, I'm not putting up with that." And one more potential Freenet node disappears.
Good riddance to bad rubbish? You miss the point of Freenet. Freenet is Free Speech without harrassment. Free Speech without fear of being taken down by a government. Free Speech without fear of being dragged into a court. (And believe me, there are some courts in this world where you won't even have the courtesy of being ordered to bend over a barrel; a bullet in the back of the head is far more likely.)
Freenet should not involved in the OS warz. Maybe I'm blowing it out of proportion, but remember, this is coming from a grey-matta-flambe helpdesk drudge. That's all I have to say. =)
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Chief Technician, Helpdesk at the End of the World
"I am an Adept of Tantric VAX."
sulli
RTFJ.
We absolutely need that kind too. Sometimes there is a fire, and you need to warn people! By comparison, Freenet needs to support a very broad range of speech, even stuff that the powers that be (e.g. political speech in China) find "patently offensive."
sulli
RTFJ.
Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day.
Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day.
Teach him to eat and he will fish forever.
is another very good way to sweeten the pot.
Then again, I think I'm talking about a differenct pot...;)
Is this the measure of critical mass for an OSS Project? When they hire their first employee, or is there some other more appropriate measure?
--CTH
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--Got Lists? | Top 95 Star Wars Line
Forgive me if I don't see a Ferarri in short term future.
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The most valuable commodity I know of is information. - Michael Douglas as Gordon Gekko, Wall Street
This is really a great idea. Instead of the tradional model of buying products, we should donate to the programmers themselves as long as they're doing their job. In this way, if they get lazy and, say, delay a release or have a serious bug in a news version, we take away some of their money.
Starving programmers! What a novel idea!
"I'll just chip in a bit for RedHat: I actually have that installed on my university machine." - Linus, '95
I was best friends with an Oskar Sandberg all through elementary school, before he went back to Sweden (his father's a diplomat).
I've only seen him once since, on a trip to Scandinavia.
Either a small world or a very common name (though switchboard comes up empty). Oscar: If "Red Diamond" means anything to you, email me!
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How long before they hire agents to do traffic analysis on the net looking for heavy Freenet usage. Even though they don't know what's being moved, it must be "bad", or they wouldn't be trying to hide it.
They'll point this out to the users' ISPs, who would in turn threaten to disconnect them. A few well-publicized incidents could prevent Freenet from ever reaching critical mass. So much for the free information utopia.
All the trolls and the goat* bunch. Not to mention the other mysterious elements around here. Oh, and as soon as congress gets a whiff of this, it'll be a federal crime to run freenet software. And it will be fun to see what a U.S court will come up with when dealing with freenet. If nothing else, it'll be good for a slashdot story.
-- Another senseless waste of fine bytes.
You'll have to ask Phillip GreenspIn from ArsDigita...