I think it's time for us all to take a step back and have a serious conversation about where we are, and where we are going.
Our current bank account balance is US$1,184.32, our current PayPal balance is $1,201.60. Even at Xor's very low hourly rate (he could get a lot more commercially given his skillset - which we should all appreciate him for) this is less than 100 hours of remaining availability. He needs to prepare for finding an alternate income source. We have a new website in the works, which is great, and many people have been working valiantly to support the project, but it's hard to escape the feeling that we're almost in a "maintenance mode". The problem with that is that you just can't generate enough excitement to attract funding in that situation. I will be the first to admit that I have had very limited time to devote to the project in recent years. I have been much more of an administrator than a leader. I don't claim otherwise. The weird thing is that, even as a 15 year old project, Freenet is more relevant now than ever. Back in the early days we received a lot of publicity, but it was mostly because the media thought of Freenet as an "indestructible Napster". This completely missed the point, of course. But now the world has caught up with us. The Internet has been recognized as the political tool that it is, people see the effects of Internet censorship in controlling the debate, it seems that there is a vaporware project almost every week that claims to do what Freenet was designed to do over 15 years ago. But unfortunately we are a 15-year-old project, and irrespective of its new-found relevance, it's very difficult to get people excited about a project that has been around for so long. Anyway, I don't want to say too much because I'd prefer for this to be more of a conversation than a lecture, but I would appreciate people's thoughts on this. Ian. -- Ian Clarke Founder, The Freenet Project Email: i...@freenetproject.org _______________________________________________ Devl mailing list Devl@freenetproject.org https://emu.freenetproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/devl
