Revamping Freenet

N3wsByt3 writes "Many will have heard about the anonymous P2P-system Freenet. What many probably don't know is, that a big change is at hand: the Freenet developers have decided to drop all support for the 0.5x version, to skip version 0.6 and to completely revamp the 0.7 build into some kind of poorly described, presumably scalable darknet. The main coder even threatened to quit if such a darknet would be rejected. So, is it finally going the right way with the development of Freenet? Maybe not, since they seem reluctant to provide real data and rather rely on security through obfuscation, and then there is still the problem of their general inability in regard to pooling human resources, which, for any OSS project, is of the utmost importance." Obviously, the article submitter has his own feelings on Freenet, but notwithstanding that, what's the latest scuttlebutt from within the Freenet crowd?

Comments

Re:Newsbyte is a well known troll

[IgnoramusMaximus]

Matthew has indeed indicated that he believes it is essential that we support "trusted links" in Freenet, and the other core Freenet developers, myself included, agree with him - so Newsbyte's attempt to stir that up into some kind of controversy is just another example of his trolling.

The whole idea of "trusted" links is beyond stupid. I will skip the obvious question of a reliable method of obtaining "trust" and proceed to this: the stated purpose of Freenet is to protect free speech of dissidents in places such as China. As in allowing them to access a global, protected network to express their views and obtain "restricted" infromation. Turning Freenet into an equvalent of a terrorist cell system, where members are introduced to each other based on their membership in the same group defeats this purpose. Furthermore, other much more mature and effective systems exsist to exchange data in such cells, such as email involving encryption and steganography. To add an insult to injury, Freenet is useless in places where mere use of the system is equivalent to hanging a sign "Dissidents live here" outside a window.

In short, the "darknet" is a last-ditch, desperate attempt at making the ... kiddy porn network survive, because the only people to whom this model is suitable are ... pedofiles.

Re:Is Freenet doomed to failure by design?

[fraudrogic]

No sane 'terrorist' is going to use Freenet to communicate... they don't need to.

Isn't "sane terrorist" an oxymoron? Probably meant "no smart terrorist".

replace the word 'freenet' with...

[jack79]

"But to create a Freenet that is completely agnostic toward content is entirely the same thing as creating a terrorist-friendly and pedophile-friendly network. That may not be the intent, but it is certainly the outcome."

You could say the same thing about paper, or cameras, or telephones, or....

Re:Child pornography

[LWATCDR]

"As the faq itself notes no one is forcing you to do anything. If you are not comfortable with the idea of absolute free speech, do not run Freenet since that's what it's all about. It's that simple"

Another way of looking at it is. If you do not want to commit aid in a felony do not run Freenet.
Or If you do not want to aid in the abuse of Children do not run Freenet.
I guess that makes it easy.

Freenet is NOT just about absolute freedom of speech. You want to make it about absolute freedom of speech? Limit it to just text files. No encoding of binaries just text.
You could then say anything you want. Freenet is taking it too far into complete freedom of action including that which harms people.
What percentage of the files really have anything to do with free speech and how many are porn and warz. How much kiddie porn is on it?
Sure if you want a warz and porn P2P network knock yourself out but admit it. Do not wrap it up in Freedom of Speech.