Re: [freenet-dev] A bold idea for discussion: "Freenet 2"
On 11/05/2015 04:35 PM, Matthew Toseland wrote: > On 03/11/15 18:00, Ian wrote: ... >> Thoughts? > IMHO general file storage is important. Even for revolutions! How much > of the supposed technical contribution to the Arab Spring was videos on > Youtube? > > I would like to see a prototype of Tahrir. I don't think it should be > called Freenet 2.0. Agreed. Freenet is not just its code but also its community. Freenet is Freenet, and Tahrir is its own thing. Tahrir should not take Freenet's name. signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature ___ Devl mailing list Devl@freenetproject.org https://emu.freenetproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/devl
Re: [freenet-dev] A bold idea for discussion: "Freenet 2"
On 03/11/15 18:00, Ian wrote:
> For those that appear to be craving a "bold new strategy", one thing I've
> proposed in the past would be to put the main Freenet codebase in
> "maintenance mode", and throw our resources behind http://tahrirproject.org/
> (possibly renaming it "Freenet 2" since Tahrir is a terrible name).
>
> Tahrir addresses several key concerns:
>
>- The people we actually want to help, those in China, Iran, etc, often
>have very constrained bandwidth. Tahrir is designed for this, Freenet is a
>bandwidth hog
That is much less true now than it was when Tahrir was started. Lots of
China has reasonable broadband. On the other hand, China is more than
capable of blocking both opennet and darknet Freenet, and ditto with
Tahrir.
Across the world, most people with Internet access have it on mobile
phones, and it's usually so restricted that even Tahrir probably
wouldn't work. Because last mile bandwidth, and even backhaul bandwidth,
is more expensive than advanced filtering. And because the devices are
designed specifically to talk to the cloud: Even if you reduce the
bandwidth requirements and somehow manage to run p2p on carrier
networks, you still have the uptime, storage and above all battery life
implications. Plus all phones have built-in government backdoors
(baseband attacks).
IMHO the solution to these problems is fixed nodes on home routers -
adapted Pi's or cheap but programmable home server boxes.
For emergency communications using ad hoc wifi (both disaster recovery
and political protest etc) there are alternative systems already being
built. One of the main problems is they need to root the phones, and
maybe deploy hardware, since it's strictly forbidden for a phone to have
mesh networking support.
>- Tahrir is designed for a Twitter/Facebook type use-case
>("microblogging"), which has proven very powerful in terms of promoting
>political change
Sone is popular on Freenet. That sort of UI may make more sense in the
medium term. It's easier to make it scale, which could be important,
although Twitter in practice does need search as well as subscription.
For anything distributed, subscription is easy, but search is hard.
>- It's a fresh-ish codebase, much smaller, although needs some cobwebs
>blown off
Not necessarily a good thing, any more than it is for the dozens of
other projects reinventing the wheel.
>- Can incorporate a mixnet, but actually better suited to a mixnet than
>Tor because latency is less of an issue
Also true for Freenet. Inserts can reasonably be tunneled through
long-term Mixminion-style onion routing. At least on a darknet.
> Clearly, this would not be a direct successor to Freenet, it would not be
> backwards compatible, and would be designed for a different (but perhaps
> more current) use-case.
>
> Thoughts?
IMHO general file storage is important. Even for revolutions! How much
of the supposed technical contribution to the Arab Spring was videos on
Youtube?
I would like to see a prototype of Tahrir. I don't think it should be
called Freenet 2.0.
On 03/11/15 18:10, Michael Grube wrote:
> Bold indeed.
>
> Necessary, in my opinion. The complexity that the project will ultimately
> face due to disparate and poorly documented code will eventually outweigh
> the benefits even of holding on to current users.
>
> The currently complex code also means that Freenet may become a security
> joke, which is not acceptable.
I agree that Freenet is insecure. But I see this as an architectural
problem rather than a complexity one at the moment. Lots of security
systems are highly complex, and at least Freenet avoids the classic
problems of buffer overflows etc. Once we have solved the basic security
problems (including sorting out darknet!) we can move towards
stabilising it to a point where things like third party review would
actually make sense.
signature.asc
Description: OpenPGP digital signature
___
Devl mailing list
Devl@freenetproject.org
https://emu.freenetproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/devl
Re: [freenet-dev] A bold idea for discussion: "Freenet 2"
On Tuesday, November 03, 2015 06:57:18 PM Ian wrote: > On Tue, Nov 3, 2015 at 6:43 PM, xor wrote: > > Please please don't try to split the developer community like you just > > did, > > we're lucky that the situation has improved to the point where I can > > barely > > keep up with the IRC backlog. > > Keep your shirt on - I described this as a bold strategy - and made it > clear that it was only for the purposes of discussion. Sorry if I sounded like being really offended. That wasn't my intention. Please notice that with Freenet, you created something which is an important part of the life of people such as me (which is nice!). If you suggest giving up on Freenet, this hurts those people, so you get emotional replies. > I agree with many > of the disadvantages of doing this. It doesn't hurt to consider "out of > the box" ideas once in a while. It consumes time which would be better spent on writing code :) > However, it's clear that some people are very dissatisfied with the current > state of Freenet. Those are usually the same people who don't write code; so their verdict is doubtful. Often, they're also random nicknames which haven't even been on the IRC channel / list for longer than a few days; so the NSA attack does sound sort of probable. > Whatever we call it, it's possible that Tahrir might be > of interest to them (it wouldn't be depriving Freenet of anything because > such people are unlikely to contribute to Freenet). Is it our responsibility to spend our time and mailing list space to advertise different projects? :) They'll for sure find Tahir from Wikipedia etc. if it better suits them. No need to go all spineless and anti-advertise against ourself on our own space. (I know Tahir is your work; and I am not trying to judge upon it! It here is just an example for me; it doesn't matter that the specific value of $project is Tahir here, I think this discussion can be answered in a generic way. If people recommended to replace Freenet with any other project, my reply would have been the same.) -- hopstolive (keyword for Ians spam filter) signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part. ___ Devl mailing list Devl@freenetproject.org https://emu.freenetproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/devl
Re: [freenet-dev] A bold idea for discussion: "Freenet 2"
On Tue, Nov 3, 2015 at 6:43 PM, xor wrote: > > Please please don't try to split the developer community like you just did, > we're lucky that the situation has improved to the point where I can barely > keep up with the IRC backlog. > Keep your shirt on - I described this as a bold strategy - and made it clear that it was only for the purposes of discussion. I agree with many of the disadvantages of doing this. It doesn't hurt to consider "out of the box" ideas once in a while. However, it's clear that some people are very dissatisfied with the current state of Freenet. Whatever we call it, it's possible that Tahrir might be of interest to them (it wouldn't be depriving Freenet of anything because such people are unlikely to contribute to Freenet). Ian. ___ Devl mailing list Devl@freenetproject.org https://emu.freenetproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/devl
Re: [freenet-dev] A bold idea for discussion: "Freenet 2"
On Wednesday, November 04, 2015 01:38:46 AM xor wrote: > So many people people are currently working on it every day that it's hard > for me to keep up with replying to every discussion. Notice: You likely don't have that feeling because you're not on IRC anymore. The mailing list is just a secondary fallback mechanism, most discussion happens on IRC. It is hard to keep up with the amount of development talk happening on IRC; which does show that the project is still healthy enough. Please please don't try to split the developer community like you just did, we're lucky that the situation has improved to the point where I can barely keep up with the IRC backlog. signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part. ___ Devl mailing list Devl@freenetproject.org https://emu.freenetproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/devl
Re: [freenet-dev] A bold idea for discussion: "Freenet 2"
On Tuesday, November 03, 2015 12:00:06 PM Ian wrote:
> For those that appear to be craving a "bold new strategy", one thing I've
> proposed in the past would be to put the main Freenet codebase in
> "maintenance mode", and throw our resources behind http://tahrirproject.org/
> (possibly renaming it "Freenet 2" since Tahrir is a terrible name).
>
> Tahrir addresses several key concerns:
>
>- The people we actually want to help, those in China, Iran, etc, often
>have very constrained bandwidth. Tahrir is designed for this, Freenet is
> a bandwidth hog
>- Tahrir is designed for a Twitter/Facebook type use-case
>("microblogging"), which has proven very powerful in terms of promoting
>political change
>- It's a fresh-ish codebase, much smaller, although needs some cobwebs
>blown off
>- Can incorporate a mixnet, but actually better suited to a mixnet than
>Tor because latency is less of an issue
>
> Clearly, this would not be a direct successor to Freenet, it would not be
> backwards compatible, and would be designed for a different (but perhaps
> more current) use-case.
>
> Thoughts?
Argh. 1000% nononononononononono. Sorry :)
Freenet is fine.
The codebase is fine.
So many people people are currently working on it every day that it's hard for
me to keep up with replying to every discussion.
Just because random people start childish "java is teh sucks!!1" flamewars on
the mailing list does not mean we suddenly have to give up.
All we should give up on is the whole "rewrite" discussions.
If someone wants to rewrite, he should do that on their own mailing lists.
Thats the way it works anyway: A rewrite of a project is a fork. A fork is not
the original project. So they should use their mailing lists, not ours. This
only distracts developers. These discussions have been so much of a
distraction recently that I even already have a draft of a mail which requests
changing the IRC channel policy to disallow rewrite discussions.
This is strongly indicated because the whole of these discussions might even
be the QUEEN-program attack [2]:
Disturb developers so much with outrageous demands that they spent 100% of
their time in discussing with the attacker; and 0% on writing code.
And besides requesting people to migrate to a different project, please don't
do this rename of Tahir, ever. It would be an almost rogue act which only
confused users.
As long as Tahir cannot do all which Freenet can do [1], it is not "Freenet
2".
Even if it had all features, it couldn't really be "Freenet 2" until it was a
binary compatible alternate client:
Once a software has existed for >15 years, people will keep using it, no
matter how much you try to force them not to. If you forcefully fork Freenet,
people will just fork it back and continue working on what it originally was.
In fact that's what I would seriously consider doing if people tried to force-
split the project.
So please just use an own name for a software of its own.
Sorry if I have to brush this off very strongly like I just did, but we're
really getting to the point where discussions yield demands which are so far
beyond what we need that a clear "no!" is needed.
Again: Freenet works. The code is usable. I work with it as my daily routine,
and there is absolutely no reason to give up.
Greetings
[1] https://wiki.freenetproject.org/Projects
[2] http://draketo.de/english/freenet/de-orchestrating-phk
--
hopstolive (keyword for Ians spam filter)
signature.asc
Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
___
Devl mailing list
Devl@freenetproject.org
https://emu.freenetproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/devl
Re: [freenet-dev] A bold idea for discussion: "Freenet 2"
Am Dienstag, 3. November 2015, 12:00:06 schrieb Ian: > For those that appear to be craving a "bold new strategy", one thing I've > proposed in the past would be to put the main Freenet codebase in > "maintenance mode" … > Clearly, this would not be a direct successor to Freenet, it would not be > backwards compatible, and would be designed for a different (but perhaps > more current) use-case. > Thoughts? That sounds like throwing away all we achieved for an uncertain gain. When going from 0.5 to 0.7 lots of documentation went stale, lots of tutorials did not work anymore, lots of useful sites disappeared. And people left. I agree with Florent that back then this was necessary, since Darknet is needed to provide any real measure of security. But it cost a lot. By throwing away the Freenet codebase, we would just repeat that, but without the gain. Also we would alienate all the volunteers who poured their time into Freenet by throwing away all the work they did. I agree with Dan that we built up lots of potential but did not make use of that. It’s time to reap the harvest: Using what we built. As a point in case, the Freenet Communications Primitives article[1] is one of the most accessed on my website. There clearly is interest in what we provide *right now*. We just need to make it easier to use. (and that’s lots of work, but it would also be lots of work for Tahrir, as you experienced with the three GSoC projects spent on it which still did not yield a working system) [1]: http://draketo.de/light/english/freenet/communication-primitives-1-files-and-sites Best wishes, Arne signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part. ___ Devl mailing list Devl@freenetproject.org https://emu.freenetproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/devl
Re: [freenet-dev] A bold idea for discussion: "Freenet 2"
I'm nobody, and nobody should listen to me, but here's my 2 cents
anyways. I expressed something like this on IRC a few days ago. I'm
also new so I may be missing relevant project history.
I don't believe Freenet has realized much of its potential utility at
present. Therefore, I believe the way for Freenet to bring the most
utility to the most people, given the available development capacity,
is to mature the existing plugin ecosystem around existing Freenet,
and expand the feature set provided. (When I say "integrate into fred"
I mean via plugins)
Specifically, in roughly this order:
1. Integrate something like FMS into fred, possibly by fixing
freetalk. In my opinion a threaded discussion system is a more
effective and flexible mode of communication than microblogging.
Really you can microblog in a threaded discussion system as well.
2. Integrate something like OpenBazaar into fred. I imagine this could
be something of a "killer app" for Freenet as it exists today. The
world seems to be hungry for a decentralized marketplace, and Freenet
can deliver on that with fairly minimal effort in my opinion.
3. Integrate something like infocalypse into fred, with a github-like
UI for managing projects, tracking bugs, and collaborating. Consider
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_of_GitHub as my justification
for that need (there's also censorship BY github). It's also possible
that #2 can/should depend on this. This would be a huge undertaking,
so perhaps some sort of minimum useful subset of this would be good
instead.
In my opinion as an interested outsider/someone trying to involve
himself in the project, I'm not in favor of "Freenet 2" at this point.
I believe development efforts are better applied against making
Freenet more useful to more people. Strategically, I believe #2 in
particular has the potential to attract a lot more developer attention
which could in turn facilitate a "Freenet 2" effort in the future (or
a code cleanup). I further believe that #2 could potentially attract
funding to the project. OpenBazaar has a fair amount of funding,
indicating interest and available money.
I wouldn't presume to tell anyone where they should expend their
development effort, but this is just my two cents, do with it as you
will.
Cheers,
Dan
On Tue, Nov 3, 2015 at 10:10 AM, Michael Grube wrote:
> Bold indeed.
>
> Necessary, in my opinion. The complexity that the project will ultimately
> face due to disparate and poorly documented code will eventually outweigh
> the benefits even of holding on to current users.
>
> The currently complex code also means that Freenet may become a security
> joke, which is not acceptable.
>
> My contributions have been limited but I believe this would be a step in
> the right direction.
>
> Thanks,
> Mike
>
> On Tue, Nov 3, 2015 at 1:00 PM, Ian wrote:
>
>> For those that appear to be craving a "bold new strategy", one thing I've
>> proposed in the past would be to put the main Freenet codebase in
>> "maintenance mode", and throw our resources behind
>> http://tahrirproject.org/
>> (possibly renaming it "Freenet 2" since Tahrir is a terrible name).
>>
>> Tahrir addresses several key concerns:
>>
>>- The people we actually want to help, those in China, Iran, etc, often
>>have very constrained bandwidth. Tahrir is designed for this, Freenet
>> is a
>>bandwidth hog
>>- Tahrir is designed for a Twitter/Facebook type use-case
>>("microblogging"), which has proven very powerful in terms of promoting
>>political change
>>- It's a fresh-ish codebase, much smaller, although needs some cobwebs
>>blown off
>>- Can incorporate a mixnet, but actually better suited to a mixnet than
>>Tor because latency is less of an issue
>>
>> Clearly, this would not be a direct successor to Freenet, it would not be
>> backwards compatible, and would be designed for a different (but perhaps
>> more current) use-case.
>>
>> Thoughts?
>>
>> Ian.
>> ___
>> Devl mailing list
>> Devl@freenetproject.org
>> https://emu.freenetproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/devl
> ___
> Devl mailing list
> Devl@freenetproject.org
> https://emu.freenetproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/devl
___
Devl mailing list
Devl@freenetproject.org
https://emu.freenetproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/devl
Re: [freenet-dev] A bold idea for discussion: "Freenet 2"
Bold indeed.
Necessary, in my opinion. The complexity that the project will ultimately
face due to disparate and poorly documented code will eventually outweigh
the benefits even of holding on to current users.
The currently complex code also means that Freenet may become a security
joke, which is not acceptable.
My contributions have been limited but I believe this would be a step in
the right direction.
Thanks,
Mike
On Tue, Nov 3, 2015 at 1:00 PM, Ian wrote:
> For those that appear to be craving a "bold new strategy", one thing I've
> proposed in the past would be to put the main Freenet codebase in
> "maintenance mode", and throw our resources behind
> http://tahrirproject.org/
> (possibly renaming it "Freenet 2" since Tahrir is a terrible name).
>
> Tahrir addresses several key concerns:
>
>- The people we actually want to help, those in China, Iran, etc, often
>have very constrained bandwidth. Tahrir is designed for this, Freenet
> is a
>bandwidth hog
>- Tahrir is designed for a Twitter/Facebook type use-case
>("microblogging"), which has proven very powerful in terms of promoting
>political change
>- It's a fresh-ish codebase, much smaller, although needs some cobwebs
>blown off
>- Can incorporate a mixnet, but actually better suited to a mixnet than
>Tor because latency is less of an issue
>
> Clearly, this would not be a direct successor to Freenet, it would not be
> backwards compatible, and would be designed for a different (but perhaps
> more current) use-case.
>
> Thoughts?
>
> Ian.
> ___
> Devl mailing list
> Devl@freenetproject.org
> https://emu.freenetproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/devl
___
Devl mailing list
Devl@freenetproject.org
https://emu.freenetproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/devl
[freenet-dev] A bold idea for discussion: "Freenet 2"
For those that appear to be craving a "bold new strategy", one thing I've
proposed in the past would be to put the main Freenet codebase in
"maintenance mode", and throw our resources behind http://tahrirproject.org/
(possibly renaming it "Freenet 2" since Tahrir is a terrible name).
Tahrir addresses several key concerns:
- The people we actually want to help, those in China, Iran, etc, often
have very constrained bandwidth. Tahrir is designed for this, Freenet is a
bandwidth hog
- Tahrir is designed for a Twitter/Facebook type use-case
("microblogging"), which has proven very powerful in terms of promoting
political change
- It's a fresh-ish codebase, much smaller, although needs some cobwebs
blown off
- Can incorporate a mixnet, but actually better suited to a mixnet than
Tor because latency is less of an issue
Clearly, this would not be a direct successor to Freenet, it would not be
backwards compatible, and would be designed for a different (but perhaps
more current) use-case.
Thoughts?
Ian.
___
Devl mailing list
Devl@freenetproject.org
https://emu.freenetproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/devl
