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Fracturing P2P Networks 246

Posted by Hemos from the tempest-in-a-teacup dept.
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.
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Fracturing P2P Networks More

Fracturing P2P Networks

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  • I'm curious (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 06, 2003 @07:49AM (#7142780)
    does someone seriously believe Freenet is just a research project when it has such social ramifications?

    In a couple of decades' time, when everything, such as phone, radio, television, movies, music, books, the lot, are locked up through DRM/Palladium, something like Freenet would be the anemia (sp?) of the command-and-control society companies are pushing us towards. It may well be illegal some time in the future.
    • something like Freenet would be the anemia (sp?)

      I think the word you're looking for is "anathema".

      Xentax

      • Re:I'm curious (Score:4, Funny)

        by alexo ( 9335 ) on Monday October 06, 2003 @11:58AM (#7144815) Journal

        >> something like Freenet would be the anemia (sp?) of the command-and-control society companies are pushing us towards.
        >
        > I think the word you're looking for is "anathema".

        Or possibly "enema".
        One can argue that society needs it more than the suggested aternative.

    • Re:I'm curious (Score:2, Funny)

      by kfg ( 145172 )
      Freenet would be the anemia (sp?) of the command-and-control society

      Who could just eat their spinich and feel much better.

      Damn, if only Bill Gates and John Ashcroft hadn't watched so much Popeye as kids we might have had them.

      KFG
    • ...something like Freenet would be the anemia (sp?) of the command-and-control...

      I'm pretty sure this is the first instance of "pedant-bait" I've ever seen on /.

  • Responsibility (Score:5, Interesting)

    by TheViciousOverWind ( 649139 ) <martin@siteloom.dk> on Monday October 06, 2003 @07:50AM (#7142790) Homepage
    If Ian Clarke claims it is anything but research, then people will start to see it in a whole new light, perhaps claiming Ian (and other developers) be held resposible for its use.

    Maybe he just seeks to avoid those conflicts?

    • Re:Responsibility (Score:3, Insightful)

      by commie_pig ( 585693 )

      On the other hand, it could be a euphemism for "I can rig the software up to make it easier for companies to track down pirates". However, let's hope this is not the case.

      Hopefully he's just trying to protect himself. The legal systems are making it far too easy to prosecute developers who have no control over the uses of their software. Sure, we know what can happen over P2P networks, but then the same could be said about the net in principle.

      --"External World Viewing Interface" - the day when M$ paten

    • Re:Responsibility (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Xentax ( 201517 ) on Monday October 06, 2003 @07:57AM (#7142835)
      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

      • Re:Responsibility (Score:1, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward
        You got it completely backwards. This is understandable because the links in the article are semi-slashdotted.

        The people who want to hold Ian Clarke responsible are the users. They are concerned about potential flaws in the system that could could expose them to liability. (And if you are a Chinese dissident, liability may include getting killed.)

        Some users are saying Ian Clarke is covering his butt by saying it is just a research project.

    • If Ian Clarke claims it is anything but research, then people will start to see it in a whole new light, perhaps claiming Ian (and other developers) be held resposible for its use.

      A good point, in light of Sharman Networks' problems with Kazaa. Do you think "it was just a research project" would be a defence acceptable to the serious boys in the boring suits? If it's just a research project, they would say, then you should maintain lists of those using and experimenting with it. So they know who not t

    • Mmmm... I wonder if the Chinese political prisonner who is about to be shot could get away with it by claiming it's Ian Clarke's fault!
    • In his speech at DefCon 0A last year, he expressed that he is trying his best to make freenet infallible to monitoring, but he admitted that it is still dangerous to put too much faith in the security of any system.

  • Child porn (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 06, 2003 @07:52AM (#7142803)
    Anyone find anything of interest in FreeNet? It was too slow for casual browsing, at least...

    Apparently, it is easier to find all kinds of "interesting" stuff (mostly entertaining documents by crackpots) in run-of-the-mill p2p networks, such as DC. And all the feds looking for child porn distributors would do well to take a look at edonkey2000 network. DC is self-censoring, i.e. child/gay porn sharers aer kicked away from the hubs.

    It's funny to see how hysterical people are about child porn, and how "underground" it is portrayed in the media. But yet relatively public networks such as edonkey has lots of the "pre-teen" material. It's not like it would take a heroic detective skills to raid some of the houses of people who are distributing it...
    • "It's funny to see how hysterical people are about child porn, and how "underground" it is portrayed in the media. But yet relatively public networks such as edonkey has lots of the "pre-teen" material. It's not like it would take a heroic detective skills to raid some of the houses of people who are distributing it..."

      Of course, there is the complete lack of advertising standards on peer-to-peer networks meaning that occasionally the 'teen miss takes on hockey team' is actually a geriatric donkey-frighte

      • Re:Child porn (Score:5, Informative)

        by Zocalo ( 252965 ) on Monday October 06, 2003 @08:16AM (#7142959) Homepage
        On the subject of child porn's "underground" portrayal in the (mainstream) media I once read an article about an IT journalist who was always being asked by his non IT colleagues "Where's the porn?" Their intent was obviously to write another "Diss of the Internet as a hive of pedophiles" article that were and are so common. His standard response was "If it's is easy to find as you and your ilk claim, then I'm sure you can find it all by yourself, can't you."

        When the journalists reporting on the subject don't have a clue, then it's hardly suprising that their articles are somewhat skewed. Skip forward a few years and now we are getting the same standards of journalistic brilliance applied to P2P and the whole copyright issue.

        • Are you using "porn" synonymously with "child porn"? If you're not, it's pretty easy to find it. I mean, just go to google and search. Child porn, OTOH, is a lot harder to find. The closest I've ever come to finding any is seeing a few links on The Freedom Engine (the oldest freenet portal) to sites that claimed to have child porn. I never found out if they actually did (I'm not tasteless), but they were there.

          The journalism on the subject ranks right up there in terms of reliability as the articles that u

    • "child/gay"? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by kerry-buckley ( 647774 ) on Monday October 06, 2003 @08:05AM (#7142888)
      i.e. child/gay porn sharers aer kicked away from the hubs.

      Why are you lumping gay porn in with child porn? Is the only acceptable porn that depicting women, or heterosexual couples?

      Just curious.

      • Oh, and that heterosexual couple darn-well better be married and do it with the lights off, too. We're a Christian nation, didn't you hear?

      • Re:"child/gay"? (Score:4, Informative)

        by Flamerule ( 467257 ) on Monday October 06, 2003 @09:09AM (#7143372)
        Why are you lumping gay porn in with child porn?
        Because dc hub operators have freedom to ban what they want, and many of them don't want to see child/gay porn, if any porn at all.

        I think you read too much into that comment.

      • Nothing wrong with it (Score:3, Informative)

        by phorm ( 591458 )
        Some people, though, get off by mislabelling both so that others will download it. Put up what you prefer, but label it appropriate. Many people don't have a problem with other people enjoying their variety of pr0n (be it by preference or fetish - so long as it is legal), but it's really a pain when you download a 125MB file only to find it is something else.While I accept pr0n for "alternative preferences" than my own, it's definately not a turn-on. With the illegal stuff, it's even worse, because now it's
    • What is DC?

      Sounds interesting -- is it related to David Chaum's work (Dining Cryptographers)?

      Any pointers?
    • Funny how the RIAA and friends can move heaven and earth in an attempt to get info on people trading bad music on P2P networks, and yet nobody can do same to cut down on kiddie porn. Where the fuck are the priorities???

      • Re:RIAA... (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Rogerborg ( 306625 )
        There's no money in helping kiddies. There's votes to be had in saying that you're going to help them, but saying is a very different thing from doing.

  • Research vs. production (Score:5, Interesting)

    by heironymouscoward ( 683461 ) <heironymouscowar ... m ['oo.' in gap]> on Monday October 06, 2003 @07:52AM (#7142806) Journal
    A standard problem with deploying systems is that as soon as there is a critical mass of users, the bulk of them want stability rather than innovation.

    The solution is to have multiple parallel versions, one for the early adopters, one for the mass market, and one for the late adopters.

    If this is not possible within Freenet itself (because the network exists as a single entity) then the solution is to have alternative products. It seems quite fair to have (e.g. Gnunet) providing a robust and stable product while Freenet continues to act as a research project: both needs are clear and there is no real need to compromise either of them.

    Eventually the question of how to build such networks will be fully understood and the research will end and everyone will migrate to the One Network that does it best.

    Until then, yay, more Freenet, and more choice!

    • Re:Research vs. production (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Teancum ( 67324 ) <robert_horning@netz e r o . n et> on Monday October 06, 2003 @08:25AM (#7143018) Homepage Journal
      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.
      • The protocol specification is here. [sourceforge.net]
        • I still stand by what I said.

          This link is a fairly good representation of the protocol, but this isn't the final word, and if you tried to implement a Freenet node based on the information in this document, you still couldn't get a node to work with the other nodes of the base line Java implementation of Freenet.

          The real documentation is in the source code, not in a protocol document. BTW, look at the date this was last changed: Tue Jul 2 07:44:08 2002 UTC

          I believe that the protocol has changed quite a
          • There is enough there to get one through the first six months of development. If one gets that far, filling out the missing details and changes (which AFAIK are all backwards compatible) should be no problem.

            There are many things wrong with Freenet - after having used it over a long period of time I could write a book about the problems - but that the protocol isn't specified is not one of them.
            • I would have to argue that this is indeed one huge problem. From plenty of experience developing software with projects much larger than the freenet project (unfortunately with propritary software goals) I have been burned whenever I got involved with a project that didn't try to get the documentation done ahead of time.

              Indeed, the mantra "Resist the urge to code" is something that you really need to keep in mind, even with small projects. Freenet is not even a brand new project any more, so proceeding w
              • The point I'm trying to make here is that indeed this is a problem of Research vs. Production. Freenet is bent on testing and trying new and different methodologies. While this is a noble task to perform, with white papers and honest to goodness actual science in computer science (wow, does that actually happen?) there does reach a point that it needs to move more toward software engineering where specifications written in plain old English (or other common written language between developers) is used.

                I w

    • Re:Research vs. production (Score:4, Informative)

      by Rich0 ( 548339 ) on Monday October 06, 2003 @08:41AM (#7143112) Homepage
      The solution is to have multiple parallel versions, one for the early adopters, one for the mass market, and one for the late adopters.

      Freenet DOES have stable, unstable, and development branches.

      I used to run stable all the time. It broke about every other version for a while. I upgraded to unstable which seemed to be working better.

      I now have a collection of freenet.jar.#### files for each build I've installed. The freenet website does not maintain an archive of builds, so I have to maintain my own. Of course, Builds change almost daily or even more often, so I can't count on actually downloading a stable build.

      There also is no official changelog on their website. Apparently if you browse the developer mailing list you might find a list of what changed.

      What Freenet really needs is some good-old change control and documentation. They can dump whatever they want into the development branch, but before moving it to unstable or stable they should make a changelog listing what changed, and then post it to the website. They should also keep an archive of prior releases. Having the source code in a CVS is NOT a substitute for this. If I know that build xyz works fine I need to know which versions of every source file went into that build.

      They can also stand to use sourceforge/etc for bug tracking.

      I'm all for researching the design of the alogrithm, but forcing all users to be beta-testers all the time isn't the way to build a user-base. If users want to be both stable and on the cutting edge they can just run two nodes in parallel.

  • Guatanmo Bay (Score:2, Funny)

    by kinnell ( 607819 )
    Perhaps if it were anything other than a research project, Mr Clarke might be classified as a terrorist.
  • How long before someone makes a client to merge the two transparently to the user?

  • From the old article, it says... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by AArmadillo ( 660847 ) on Monday October 06, 2003 @07:58AM (#7142843)
    # What is Freenet?

    Freenet is free software designed to provide a forum where information can be published and consumed without fear of censorship. It does this by providing a completely decentralized, and robust way that people can publish and read information anonymously. Freenet grew out of a paper I wrote while still a student at Edinburgh University.

    Sounds like the canary has changed its tune, eh? Now freenet is a research project, not a 'forum where information can be published and consumed without fear of censorship.' Although I always respect a developer that wants to go back and fix bugs with a system before moving to another release (or I suppose in this case, after moving to another release), the email from Ian Clarke sounds downright aggorant -- you can address points about bugs without telling someone to go use another network. I don't use freenet, so it doesn't really affect me, but I definately feel sorry for those who do/did.

  • Freenet not perfect (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Henry V .009 ( 518000 ) on Monday October 06, 2003 @08:01AM (#7142862) Journal
    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.

  • looking for distributors (Score:3, Interesting)

    by RicRoc ( 41406 ) on Monday October 06, 2003 @08:08AM (#7142900) Homepage
    I like this comment:

    It is estiamted that, after digging a 100 ft well, it is possible to achieve over six kilobits of extra RAM storage at 20 kHz.
    We are currently looking for distributors.

    Data storage in a well!

    Seriously, though, I've been thinking that something like this is the solution to the real-world problem of permanent storage. CDs die. Tapes (or their hardware) die. Harddrives die. The only way to maintain permanent storage over _long_ periods of time is to think of it like drops in an ocean: data forever moving. The net will live forever.

    We need a p2p network for secure, private file storage, not sharing. Anybody know of such a project? I don't think it's freenet, nor is it kazaa. Is this a new p2p idea? Data always flowing, noone knowing what's there. Just have everyone pay N MB to store one MB of private data, then the data can be N (-1?) fold secure.
    • I would strongly recommend doing some sort of operation like this with a small number of users, and all of whom who you know you can trust.

      Or just buy a RAID

      If you had some sort of p2p network like that, people would find ways to not provide any storage area and still use yours, use massive bandwidth for transferring what they have on your storage, or possibly crack it to get your data.

      which would suck.
      • How about OceanStore [berkeley.edu]? The whole ocean thing even goes along with the "flow" analogy ;)

        "OceanStore is a global persistent data store designed to scale to billions of users. It provides a consistent, highly-available, and durable storage utility atop an infrastructure comprised of untrusted servers."
    • This sounds a little like the OceanStore Project [berkeley.edu] that a friend of mine worked on in grad school.
    • WASTE [sourceforge.net] perhaps? (I don't know all the details of WASTE but it sounds kind of like what you're intersted in.)
    • There's no way to ensure that those N-fold people actually stay with the program, and not quit/delete data/fake storing data.

      If you gather up a bunch of say 5 friends, which all store data on multiple disks or with redundancy (RAID1 / RAID5), located in different areas (no natural disasters taking out all) running different systems (not all taken by same Windoze worm) you'll have better data security than 1000 random P2P users.

      Kjella
    • "The net will live forever."

      Yes, it probably will. However, how many times have you gone to a website with some very hard to find piece of information.....only to find that the last crucial link in your quest is a broken link? No thanks. If I'm using this for file storage, it needs 100% dependability....or at least improved dependability over current storage media.

  • As I see it (Score:4, Interesting)

    by L-s-L69 ( 700599 ) on Monday October 06, 2003 @08:11AM (#7142922)
    Ive been using freenet for quite a long time. And have, in the past hyped it up and distributed CDs of it and related software to people. As it stands at the moment I will not use freenet until it improves drastically. The latest builts wont retrive anything, even the common link pages. Last time i checked most site maintainers had abandened their site because the network was so sucky. Ian Clark seems to be one of the worst freenet developers. His conserns over the type of material beening distibuted seem to be one of the many reasons freenet development is not progressing as well as it should. I only hope freenet will continue and grow into something to be proud of. We all need this kind of network, if not now, in the future.

  • What more do you guys want? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by SmirkingRevenge ( 633503 ) on Monday October 06, 2003 @08:13AM (#7142934)
    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".

    • Re:What more do you guys want? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Snaller ( 147050 ) on Monday October 06, 2003 @09:47AM (#7143702) Journal
      He doesn't "owe" anyone anything,

      No, he owes everybody respectful behaviour.

      You see, that's the beauty of open source, instead of "shit, or get off the pot" it's "code or STFU".

      You forgot "I can't program, so i'd like you to do this"
    • Actually, wrong.

      They posted on Slashdot years ago asking for donations to hire a developer to build this next generation secure p2p network.

      After reading their paper I thought it was a good idea, so I gave them money.

      Now, it's years later, and I'm still waiting for something I can use. They owe me.

  • Then and Now (Score:5, Informative)

    by Plasmic ( 26063 ) on Monday October 06, 2003 @08:18AM (#7142970)
    Ian's Comments on Freenet... Then and Now

    Real vs. Theoretical:
    Then: "Freenet is not just theoretical, it has been downloaded by over 1.2 million users since the project started, and it is used for the distribution of censored information all over the world, including countries such as China and the Middle East." -- Freenet web site [sourceforge.net]
    Now: "Freenet is a research project, always has been. If people find that its usable, then great, they can help us research how to make it better." -- Ian, Newsgroup posting [gmane.org]

    Use Freenet vs. Use Something Else:
    Then: "Freenet is a pretty effective and scalable way to distribute large files and it is immune to "denial of service" attacks, so it is certainly useful beyond its primary goal of permitting anonymous information distribution." -- Ian, GrepLaw Interview [harvard.edu]
    Now: "If you want something easy to use that works today and claims to protect your anonymity, I suggest you try Earth Station 5, its developers tell us that its just *great*!" -- Ian, Newsgroup posting [gmane.org]

    Production vs. Development:
    Then: "Freenet is also actively used in other countries, including the United States, to distribute censored information such as the Church of Scientology "Operating Thetan" documents. Freenet has been download by over 2,000,000 people." -- Ian, GrepLaw Interview [harvard.edu]
    Now: "I have never ever characterized Freenet as being anything other than in development. Either help, stop griping, or find an alternative." -- Ian, Newsgroup posting [gmane.org]

    I didn't find any direct conflicts in the articles linked above, but there's certainly a shift in tone. It's also worth mentioning that they have a release called "stable", in addition to the "development" and "unstable" branches.

    • Re:Then and Now (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Rogerborg ( 306625 ) on Monday October 06, 2003 @08:31AM (#7143045) Homepage

      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.

      • 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.

        The post was a plea for people to stop griping, and start helping - nothing more, nothing less.

        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.

        If there was a problem

      • Do you realize that your post is in response to a post by Ian or are you trolling?
    • Now: "Freenet is a research project, always has been. If people find that its usable, then great, they can help us research how to make it better." -- Ian, Newsgroup posting

      It would appear its not a newsgroup but a webboard?
      • It would appear its not a newsgroup but a webboard?
        Gmane [gmane.org] is a service that lets you read and post to mailing lists via NNTP with a usenet newsreader, and makes archives available on the web. So, Ian posted to a mailing list, which was routed to usenet and archived as a (read-only) "webboard".

        And now, would somebody please mod me off-topic? :-)

        • Gmane is a service that lets you read and post to mailing lists via NNTP with a usenet newsreader, and makes archives available on the web. So, Ian posted to a mailing list, which was routed to usenet and archived as a (read-only) "webboard".

          Ooh, that sounds usefull. Does it work with any mailinglist or only a select few?

          And now, would somebody please mod me off-topic? :-)

          Schush! Not so loud, they do that at the slightest provokation, such as setting a comma wrong! (How about modding some threads up i
          • Does it work with any mailinglist or only a select few?
            Well, read the page! You can get basically any mailing list via gmane that can be subscribed by anybody. For the mailing list manager, gmane looks just like any other (human) subscriber.

            And it is very useful indeed. Thanks, Larsi!

    • Re:Then and Now (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Sanity ( 1431 ) *

      Then: "Freenet is not just theoretical, it has been downloaded by over 1.2 million users since the project started, and it is used for the distribution of censored information all over the world, including countries such as China and the Middle East." -- Freenet web site

      Now: "Freenet is a research project, always has been. If people find that its usable, then great, they can help us research how to make it better." -- Ian, Newsgroup posting

      No contradiction here. Linux had many users before re

  • but he didn't have to be snide about it. Next time Mr. Clarke should take a few deep breaths before he responds; otherwise he really comes off sounding obnoxious.

  • Anarchists of the world, UNITE! (Score:4, Funny)

    by kfg ( 145172 ) on Monday October 06, 2003 @08:43AM (#7143138)
    (Cue music)

    Ian Clarke, Ian Clarke, riding through the land. . .

    "Blimey, this redistribution of free information is trickier than I thought."

    Look, you take a few million rugged individualists the try to throw one blanket over them this sort of thing is bound to happen. An acquiantence of mine once complained that they couldn't get people who were Libertarians to register as party members.

    Well duh!

    Parties aren't part of the Constitutional structure of America. Why would a real Libertarian join one?

    The very concept is a bit like the proverbial procrastinators meeting or herd of cats.

    This was bound to happen. It's also bound to blow over. Maybe it'll even result in some "genetic annealing" of the net.

    KFG

  • I have always understood (Score:5, Informative)

    by br00tus ( 528477 ) on Monday October 06, 2003 @08:48AM (#7143171)
    I have been following Freenet and Freenet development for some time, and I have always undesrtood that Freenet is in the process of development. What is Freenet's version number? Is it 1 or above? No, it is 0.

    Linux was at version 0.x from 1991 until 1994 when version 1.0 was released. I remember people using Linux 0.x in 1994 though (and 1995, 1996), sometimes in a production capacity, although I'm sure caveats would have recommended against it. In fact, was Linux version 1.0 ready to be used in a production environment with no worries? Not really (I remember my 1.x server getting the "ping of death" and going down, among other things). Freenet was released in 1999. When it goes to version 1.x, that's when I'll expect a more production-oriented p2p network. But Ian does not feel it is ready, and I tend to agree. Linux was very complex, but it did have many other OS's to compare with, it was not totally groundbreaking and revolutionary (although it partly was). Freenet is forging a new path, thus takes more time.

  • It now points to freenet's donation page.

  • He's acting like a stroppy school kid "try earthstation 5" indeed. Somebody stole his Power Puff Girls collection?
  • does anyone know why the new freenet build is so buggy? i understand that there were a huge messaging change (use of NIO), but is it buggy just because there was so much code change or because NIO is broken? any information would be appreciated....

  • Blown way out of proportion (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 06, 2003 @09:45AM (#7143682)
    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.
  • I'm trying out Entropy at the moment, and I have to say I'm impressed! It seems to work almost exactly like Freenet (keybased, same kinds of keys, same syntax for keys), but it's a lot faster. Perhaps like Freenet was in the old days, I don't know. Entropy is actually fast enough to be usable.

  • Storm in a teacup (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Sanity ( 1431 ) * on Monday October 06, 2003 @10:50AM (#7144184) Homepage Journal
    I am disappointed that Slashdot would post this kind of thing, we have this kind of discussion on the Freenet mailing list all the time, in fact many of our debates are far more heated. Whoever submitted this story is just trying to stir up some crap, and it is a shame that Slashdot has given them a voice. It is interesting that they didn't also link to the rest of the discussion after the email they quoted where the debate was largely resolved - I guess that wouldn't have helped the "fracturing in the ranks!" hysteria.

    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".

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Making a more conservative "stable" code branch isn't going to improve anything if the underlying network (by which I mean the vast body of nodes and datastores) doesn't work. The difference between a Yugo and a Porsche is irrelevant when the roads are flooded.

      What Freenet needs, and what fredisdead hopes to accomplish, is a network on which routing actually routes, and datastores actually store data. It would be icing on the cake of address resolution keys actually resolved addresses, too. The trouble wit

  • Reminds me... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by mirabilos ( 219607 ) on Monday October 06, 2003 @11:41AM (#7144620) Homepage
    ... of the times when I was still using freenet-project.

    On IRC, they always were mobbing me because of
    OpenBSD, and after two head developers, Ian Clarke
    being one of them, named me a Nazi and made tail-
    length comparisions, I left.

    Not only this saved me from the hassle of putting
    up first Java then freenet-project up on OpenBSD
    and publishing the results as a service to the
    general public, no it also showed me, again, that
    many projects have problems with their attitude
    (can't exclude MirBSD though).

    They were trying to replace fproxy by a Mozilla
    (full bloat version) fork with fproxy integrated
    at that time. Nothing really stable...

    PS: Please don't ask for the IRC logs of when They
    offended me - I delete my logs daily.

  • The New Network is Good and there is NO Revolt (Score:3, Informative)

    by Famatra ( 669740 ) on Monday October 06, 2003 @12:06PM (#7144898) Journal

    This thing about a 'revolt' is false. First, Ian Clarke endorsed the idea (From the developer newsgroup October 5 2003):

    Reskill wrote:
    > Stricter upgrading sounds good to me if it helps bring the network out
    > of this hole... but I do think that, while the technically minded among
    > us play with the latest code, some of us reside on a separate network
    > so we can enjoy freenet for what it really is.
    >
    > For those wanting to give this a try, see http://mids.student.utwente.nl/~mids/freenet/

    Lets do this properly and keep it under the project umbrella. The last
    thing we need are different competing and deliberately incompatable
    Freenet versions.

    Basically stable should be reverted to whatever the current consensus is
    on a stable version, and we need two separate seedlists.

    I already have a seednode harvester set up, I can easily set up two each
    specific to a different network provided there are volunteers who will
    make their nodes available for seeding.

    Ian.

    Second, this is split (making a second network from a older (ver. 692) more functioning version) is win-win for everyone. The new secondary Freenet network I was on was much faster then the current one (Getting 100,000 kilobytes per second thoughput, and that was just because there is a default cap of 100,000). And the developers get a network to study that has 1 build, instead of a willy-nilly collection of many different builds.

    • Second, this is split (making a second network from a older (ver. 692) more functioning version) is win-win for everyone. The new secondary Freenet network I was on was much faster then the current one (Getting 100,000 kilobytes per second thoughput, and that was just because there is a default cap of 100,000).

      Yeah. 100,000 kilobytes. 100 Megabytes. 800 Megabit throughput per second. Where's this, Freenet over Internet 2?

      Kjella

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