----- Another Idiot at YbMdEs+eTUmnrJzzGOn1CvAhzRA ----- 2005.09.15 - 15:30:55GMT -----
(I hope somebody is willing to post this to the Freenet mailinglist... I don't dare to, to safeguard my anonymity). Freenet has a lot of potential, but the number of Freenet applications is really limited. The most popular Freenet applications are Frost, FIW, Fuqid and maybe PM4Pigs (just talking about Windows for now :-). FIW and PM4Pigs are no longer under development, and Frost and Fuqid have had some very long development "freezes". Let's face it, this is a rediculous low number of applications. Why do we only have a single tool for inserting freesites? A tool that is no longer under active development and could use a lot of improvement? Freesites are one of the most important parts of Freenet and yet there are almost no Freenet applications that help create freesites. Why aren't there other good insertion tools? Why has nobody tried to make a Kazaa-like filesharing program for Freenet? Or a freesite ripper like Teleport Pro? Why isn't there a utility to quickly get the CHK key for a file? I'll tell you why: it's because the support for 3rd-party applications is lousy. Why isn't there a Windows DLL on the Freenet homepage with easy to use functions to communicate to Freenet, with an extensive help file and lot's of tutorials? Why isn't there a library of functions like these in every major programming language? Hell, there isn't even a Visual Basic library for Freenet! How do you expect a Visual Basic programmer to make a program for Freenet, if Visual Basic - one of the most popular programming languages - isn't supported? Why aren't the Freenet developers on Freenet? They are making Freenet, but it seems they are not *using* Freenet. It's a good thing Matthew (and sometimes Ian) post on the Freenet mailinglist, but most Freenet users are a bit paranoid and don't want to post to a public mailinglist. If I have a question about an utility I'm going to make for Freenet and I post that question on the mailinglist, my anonymity is gone. And yes, there are anonymous remailers and no, I don't trust those. Freenet is a great idea, but without applications it's useless. /end rant Now some suggestions how we can improve the Freenet 3rd-party application developer support in Freenet 0.7: - Matthew and the other Freenet devs should be active on Frost. Maybe create a "Freenet-application-devs" board or something like that where all application developers can ask questions and get some support. - The Freenet devs should create a DLL with functions to communicate to Freenet and put it on the Freenet homepage. This way all programming languages that support importing DLL functions can be used to make Freenet applications. - Offer libaries with the same functions as this DLL in all major programming languages (Java, C++, Delphi, Visual Basic, Dot Net Languages, Python, etc). - Write an extensive helpfile, some good tutorials and some sample applications for this DLL and these libraries. This DLL and these libraries should contain a very developer friendly API, for example (just some pseudo code): downloadKey(key, HTL, data); insertKey(key, HTL, data); isFreenetRunning: Boolean; createChkKey(filename): string; If it's easy to develop for Freenet, Freenet will get a lot of usefull 3rd-party applications. If it's a nightmare to develop for Freenet - and that's the current situation - Freenet will stay the way it is: an interesting idea, but nothing more. -- Matthew J Toseland - toad at amphibian.dyndns.org Freenet Project Official Codemonkey - http://freenetproject.org/ ICTHUS - Nothing is impossible. Our Boss says so. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: signature.asc Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 189 bytes Desc: Digital signature URL: <https://emu.freenetproject.org/pipermail/tech/attachments/20050923/1fc70bca/attachment.pgp>
