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Fracturing P2P Networks
A reader writes: "If you run Freenet and have noticed that you practically can't access anything on the network, you are not alone; a group of Freenet users has organized a Freenet Revolt by forming a separate network running an old, proven build of Freenet, and things have been heating up on the freenet-devel mailing list with a scary declaration by project leader Ian Clarke that Freenet is a research project and has always been, which scared some list members, since Freenet has been actively promoted as a production network and has a sensitive userbase, including Chinese dissidents. Some people are already moving to similar networks like GNUnet and Entropy. " Of course, that does sound different then what has been said before.
Hold him responsible, just like we should sue Nobel for inventing better explosives and Samuel Colt for a better pistol, right?
While I'm all for a researcher taking responsibility for what he's doing, most things people point to as ethical or moral failures just don't measure up. Freenet has a stronger position than most P2P networks as far as non-copyright-infringing uses goes.
In fairness, I know you're not saying he *should* be held responsible, just that others might well TRY to hold him liable.
It would be sad if a network designed to help protect anonymous free speech was being held back from full use because (or partly because) the devs were concerned about people trying to supress it...
Xentax
You shouldn't verb words.
Ian Clarke is just saying that Freenet is imperfect, and some people are overreacting to what he said. Freenet is not about to start divulging anybody's anonyminity anytime soon. Actually the "research" is looking into continually better ways of protecting it. Freenet still has a long way to go, and creating some sort of pseudo-"stable" branch is not going to help things. Ian Clarke was talking about the bugs found in all software programs, not actual design failures. Of course, perfect security is a pipe dream, and those people who are throwing this tantrum can stop asking for it.
>>DC is self-censoring, i.e. child/gay porn sharers aer kicked away from the hubs.
funny how everyone assumes gay and kiddie porn are the same. Gay and into porn - you *must* be a kiddie fiddler. sheesh...
Acid House saves Souls
Why are you lumping gay porn in with child porn? Is the only acceptable porn that depicting women, or heterosexual couples?
Just curious.
I'm sorry, but this guy isn't being paid for his project, made all of his source open, and worked his ass off on something the community uses.
He doesn't "owe" anyone anything, and we should all be thankful that (and this is the main advantage with open source) a project isn't dead just because it's creator is tired of maintaining it.
Instead of complaining about it, branch the code! Make it better! Or at least make it into whatever you want. You see, that's the beauty of open source, instead of "shit, or get off the pot" it's "code or STFU".
The two premises can be both thrue. The fact that it's a research project does NOT conflict with the fact that information can be published and consumed without fear of censorship.
The largest complaint about freenet is that the communications protocol is largely undocumented. Sure, there are some white papers regarding the basic theory and even some substantial resources regarding what is going on down in the lower internals.
Unfortunately the only real documentation for what is happening is really at the source code level for the ubergeeks who are really into reading this and tweaking it to make it work. IMHO this is where the real "research" nature of freenet is happening.
Some very brilliant people (and I am not knocking them...I've had to work with low-level communications protocols like they are doing here for some projects of my own) are constantly coming up with new ideas to meet the overall goals of the Freenet project. Most of the time they are so excited to implement a new idea that they would rather just code it up than sit down and draft up some specification documents first. These are gennerally some very novel ideas and often they don't really turn out to help anyway, so the protocol is evolving very quickly as well.
What I think need to happen now (or very soon) is that some of the best of these ideas need to be formalized beyond the "base-line" standard code base for Freenet and put this into a formal written specification standard like an RFC, ISO, or ECMA document. This is not to say that development can't go on, but real-life network experiences have already been proven with a number of methods of very good ideas. When this is done, Freenet will indeed move into a production environment.
I'm getting the distinct impression that it's all getting too big for Ian, and he really doesn't know what to do next. I read his post as a plea for help, but sans the important admission that he really, really needs it.
I wonder if he's stuck in the situation where he really wants to retain control over Freenet (for the best of reasons), but has hit the limit of his technical ability.
Where should he go from here? Assign the copy rights to the FSF and trust in the basic goodness of people, I suggest.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
It's just a project leader telling someone to help fix what's broken, wait till it's fixed, or go play somewhere else. Happens all the time, read some Linus Torvalds posts to see how he gives people hell who give him shit. Nothing new here, move on. It's not the end of Freenet.
What part of >0.<5.1 don't people understand? How can people claim that we describe Freenet as production ready when the fact that Freenet isn't is embodied in the very name of each release?!
This is not inconsistent in it being downloaded by users, nor is it inconsistent with people using it - since, as anyone familiar with Open Source development, such usage is part of any O.S development process.
Anyone that does choose to use Freenet is encouraged to understand what it does and does not protect at the moment, and those that do, do-so on this basis.
We agreed to resolve these issues by creating a more conservative stable branch of Freenet, and efforts are underway to make this happen as we speak. Bottom line: "Move along, there is nothing to see here".