Freenet-core itself isn’t stable enough to rely on for something like family chat, and River is still missing some important operational pieces. In particular,

Freenet-core itself isn’t stable enough to rely on for something like family chat, and River is still missing some important operational pieces. In particular, there isn’t a smooth or robust way yet to handle things like updating the room contract, which is the decentralized part that defines membership and state. That makes recovery from mistakes or bugs harder than it should be. That said, a lot of progress has been made recently. Stability has improved noticeably even over the past couple of weeks, and most of the remaining issues are about hardening and ergonomics rather than fundamental design problems. I’m hesitant to give timelines, but my expectation is weeks rather than months before River is something I’d personally feel comfortable recommending for non-technical use. In the meantime, feedback from people trying it, especially around rough edges or failure cases, is very helpful.