a 1-2 months ago, it was stated in #Freenet that ppl should trade with
friends only, or something similary like that,
just wanted to point that out.
Jerome Flesch wrote:
if you stick to darknet only and ppl only trade refs with their friends,
then there wouldnt be a bigger darknet
only a few hundered really small darknet with no content to very little
content, the dark index on the main page
would be useless from start since you are only connected to your friends
and they dont have it either since they are
only connected to you.
its quite dumb to think i connect to a friend who connects to a friend
who connects to a friend ifinite so everyone
gets connected to each others in the end, which would never happen,
thats why ppl trade in freenet-refs.
Or perhaps you dont have friends that runs/want to run a freenet node,
then you would have world smalles darknet with 1 node.
I never spoke about connecting only to your friends. I'm perfectly aware that
most of the users don't even have only one real friend in their peer list.
When I said that some of them share their in private, I meant simply in a IRC
private discusion (-> "/msg Toto Here is my ref:
http://dark-code.bulix.org/sjvje-24cs"), so nobody else (except the network
operators of course) could get the refs.
And when I said that I can go discuss with my peers when there is a problem,
it's not because they are my friends (I know only some of my peers, not all),
but just because I know where I met them and where we share our refs. (and
even if I can't find them, I can send them a message with the node). And if
they don't answer me, I can even decide to disconnect from them, or
deactivate the connection between us. For all I know, this would be
impossible on an opennet.
Jerome Flesch wrote:
I really don't understand all of this fretting and hand-wringing
about opennet. Its basically nothing more than a vastly better way
for people to do what they are already doing today with hideous (but
regrettably necessary) kludges like #freenet-refs and http://refex.s-
coding.nl/.
But there are some differences:
With an opennet:
Imagine that a gouvernement, like China or France, decides to prevent the
access to the opennet: They would just have to fetch as many as possible
IPs, and then filter massively these IP (--> all the opennet and
opennet/darknet nodes). They would have no difficulties to do that with
an opennet, they could easily update their blacklist, and they could even
find some unwise Freenet users in their own country.
I don't know if it's really possible in China, but it would probably be
in France if the gouvernement really want to.
With a darknet:
Firstly, people don't share their refs only on #freenet-refs, but also on
#freenet-refs, the Frost board "freenet-refs", and hopefully, in private.
It would make an automatic process really harder to define.
Correction:
"It makes an automatic process really harder to define" (wrong tense, sorry)
Secondly, even if they try to fetch as many as possible refs, there are
the already-established nodes which won't be found since their owners
don't have anymore to share their refs.
And to finish, most of the users have a changing IP, making the
filtration harder.
Another point is that an user can know its peers: I know that most of the
current freenet users doesn't care about this possibility. But for my
part, I find that really really great. For example, when one of my peers
is too often backed off, I can discuss with him/her on IRC to try to
solve this problem.
At the moment, I think the darknet is a really great particularity of
Freenet. It's one of the things, which make it really singular.
But I'm not entirely against an opennet: Indeed, an opennet could bring
us more users. And if a gouvernement decides to block the access to
Freenet, they will probably only filter the opennet, and omit the
darknet. However, if you implement opennet, I think it would be a good
thing to add to the wiki a list of the countries where the opennet can be
used safely and where it's not.
Opennet has the following advantages over what people are using now:
- Several orders of magnitude more convenient for users (allowing
ease of use approaching or exceeding mainstream P2P apps)
- Decentralized and scalable
- Should lead to vastly better network topology
- We control it so we can take measures to make it more difficult to
corrupt
Disadvantages? Relative to what people are using now - none that I
can think of.
Some people may wish we lived in a fantasy world where everyone was
willing to go through the trouble of carefully establishing trusted
darknet connections, but we don't live in this world, and denying the
clear advantages of opennet to our userbase will not lead to that
fantasy.
Ian.
Ian Clarke: Co-Founder & Chief Scientist Revver, Inc.
phone: 323.871.2828 | personal blog - http://locut.us/blog
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