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.
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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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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,
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/
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.
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!
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 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?
Good point. There was serious discussion some time
ago on the mailinglist about techniques to allow
setting a node to only accept connections from
trusted nodes. That way it would be impossible
for someone to detect that you were running a
freenet node from the outside, while you still
had full access to the network and your node
could be used for storage.
It was turned down by Ian because he thought it
was a non-issue.
The argument used was that once Freenet becomes
popular enough there is no reason why running
a Freenet node means that you are doing something
suspicious. And Freenet grows easier with fully
operative nodes than with those 'stealth' nodes.
(at least that's what I remember from the discussion)
The problem of course is, that Freenet will never
become popular if ISP's start shutting the servers
down.
Ian's reply to this was:
'It is my experience that when users demand
P2P and Freenet access all ISP's will bend
over backwards to give it to them'
And I think he may be right about that. My own
ISP interpreted the 'server' clause in a way
that you were free to use napster as long as
you set the number of allowed incoming connections
to zero (effectively disabling the server). That
way people cannot upload from you, which is what
was actually illegal about Napster (downloading
is fine as you might own the CD yourself)
The ISP WANTS to offer Napster to people. They
offer broanband services so Napster is a good
reason to switch over from PPP. So they make
sure the customer CAN have Napster.
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GCP
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."
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 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
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.