6 ms·

Notably this project was conceived by a backroom decision to dump the original Freenet development team's work, in favor of a rewrite from different developers

Notably this project was conceived by a backroom decision to dump the original Freenet development team's work, in favor of a rewrite from different developers, without asking anyone on the original team. It was an ivory tower decision which was announced on the mailing list without prior discussion. The old team did not agree, yet it was forced through by a decision of the "board". The "board" was a group of people which had not been active on the project for over a decade. https://www.mail-archive.com/devl@freenetproject.org/msg55262.html https://www.mail-archive.com/devl@freenetproject.org/msg5526... The funding of the existing, original "Freenet" was repurposed for the new one of course. The new "Freenet" does not have anonymity as a design goal anymore, while the old one continues to exist and is maintained under its new name "Hyphanet" at: https://www.hyphanet.org/ https://www.hyphanet.org/

nightpool 5mo ago
I'm very glad to hear that—the anonymity of the original Freenet has led to it being a very unsavory place that was more well known for CSAM then anything positive or useful. As an outsider, it sounds like this new direction is the right choice for Freenet to try and attract new users and fulfill the team's original goals.
- qcl820DV34 5mo ago
  Extremely depraved things are not the only thing to use freedom of speech for, and freely speaking can result in all kinds of repressions. And even without agreeing on whether people should be anonymous on the Internet, it could be agreed that replacing a software which guards against a certain threat model (repressions) with one which does not, without changing the name, is not exactly a wise decision.
  - sanity 5mo ago
    The new Freenet will support the creation of anonymity systems as services on top of it, which is much better architecturally than tying the platform to one approach to anonymity as I did when I designed the original Freenet. We will also have a decentralized reputation system that will protect people from being exposed to unsavory or illegal content, a common criticism of the old Freenet architecture.
    - serf 5mo ago
      less anonymity and a reputation system? I know you designed the thing, and that was a great effort, but what a miss when compared to the vast majority of freenet users priorities.
      - sanity 5mo ago
        I wouldn't describe it as "less anonymity", it's more that the new Freenet gives applications and users different choices about anonymity depending on their requirements. I don't see how more choice is a bad thing - versus forcing the same (imperfect) solution on everyone as in my original design. Similarly, reputation systems aren't inherently coercive, they're more analogous to spam filtering or trust heuristics, mechanisms for deciding what to prioritize - but ultimate control always remains with the user.
  - Forgeties79 5mo ago
    > Extremely depraved things are not the only thing to use freedom of speech for I’m not a fan of “think of the children“ arguments but the Internet cannot actually be a complete free for all and “freedom of speech” is not some magic shield that overrides all other ethical considerations. CSAM is not a particularly high bar and frankly if you want people to throw in with you then you can’t brush it off so lightly.
    - timschmidt 5mo ago
      > I’m not a fan of “think of the children“ arguments Yet you're making one. > the Internet cannot actually be a complete free for all Yet in many important ways, it is. As much as publishers would like to shut down Scihub, it exists. The Pirate Bay famously persists. Nation states with entirely opposed legal systems connect and interoperate to at least some degree.
      - GoblinSlayer 5mo ago
        North Korean Internet will solve ip4 address exhaustion.
      - Forgeties79 5mo ago
        Dude it’s CSAM what are we even doing here.
        timschmidt 4mo ago
        What's CSAM? All of Freenet? Doubtful. The OP said: "Extremely depraved things are not the only thing to use freedom of speech for, and freely speaking can result in all kinds of repressions." Which is objectively true. You're throwing reporters, political dissidents, whistleblowers, minority groups, and just regular people who don't appreciate the Stasi in with the child pornographers which some might take as an insult and offense. What kind of criminal does Phil Zimmermann look like to you? We had this argument already in the 90s.
      - pessimizer 5mo ago
  - nullsanity 5mo ago
    > Extremely depraved things are not the only thing to use freedom of speech for. And yet, it's materially all anonymity is actually for in practice, within a margin of error. Tor - mostly crime & CSAM. Crypto - mostly crime. 4chan - mostly degeneracy, some crime. Faceless Corporations - used for crime, and things that should be crimes, but hide under other names.
sanity 5mo ago
> Notably this project was conceived by a backroom decision to dump the original Freenet development team's work, This is a false narrative, from the Freenet FAQ[1]: Why was Freenet rearchitected and rebranded? In 2019, Ian began developing a successor to the original Freenet, internally named “Locutus.” This redesign was a ground-up reimagining, incorporating lessons learned from the original Freenet and addressing modern challenges. The original Freenet, although groundbreaking, was built for an earlier era. This isn’t the first time Freenet has undergone significant changes. Around 2005, we transitioned from version 0.5 to 0.7, which was a complete rewrite introducing “friend-to-friend” networking. In March 2023, the original Freenet (developed from 2005 onwards) was spun off into an independent project called “Hyphanet” under its existing maintainers. Concurrently, “Locutus” was rebranded as “Freenet,” also known as “Freenet 2023,” to signal this new direction and focus. The rearchitected Freenet is faster, more flexible, and better equipped to offer a robust, decentralized alternative to the increasingly centralized web. To ease the transition the old freenetproject.org domain was redirected to hyphanet’s website, while the recently acquired freenet.org domain was used for the new architecture. It is important to note that the maintainers of the original Freenet did not agree with the decision to rearchitect and rebrand. However, as the architect of the Freenet Project, and after over a year of debate, Ian felt this was the necessary path forward to ensure the project’s continued relevance and success in a world far different than when he designed the previous architecture. > The new "Freenet" does not have anonymity as a design goal anymore, Because the new Freenet will have a menu of anonymity options rather than committing to a one-size-fits-all approach, while also addressing the issue of illegal content[2]. [1] https://freenet.org/about/faq/#why-was-freenet-rearchitected-and-rebranded https://freenet.org/about/faq/#why-was-freenet-rearchitected... [2] https://freenet.org/about/faq/#how-does-freenet-handle-harmful-content https://freenet.org/about/faq/#how-does-freenet-handle-harmf...
- qcl820DV34 5mo ago
  > and after over a year of debate There was no "year of debate". You came to the mailing list and announced it for the first time as a finalized decision already, without any prior debate with the original team. The "board" you cited as the body which allegedly discussed it did neither join the mailing list discussion, nor were you willing to hand out their contact info. It's all public for anyone to see on the mailing list archive: https://www.mail-archive.com/devl@freenetproject.org/msg55262.html https://www.mail-archive.com/devl@freenetproject.org/msg5526... https://www.mail-archive.com/devl@freenetproject.org/ https://www.mail-archive.com/devl@freenetproject.org/
outside2344 5mo ago
So he forked the project and went his own way. I am not sure I see the issue here. This is how we do open source on the internet. You don't have to join him, but he also has the right to go his own way too.
- qcl820DV34 5mo ago
  The issue is that the original name, "Freenet", was repurposed for a different codebase.
  - sanity 5mo ago
    Different codebase, same purpose. This isn't even the first time we did a ground-up redesign/rewrite of the Freenet codebase, we did this in 2008 with the 0.7 release.
    - qcl820DV34 5mo ago
      Repeating a bad decision does not make it any wiser.
      - sanity 5mo ago
        History will be the judge, and so far it's looking very promising given our progress.
        darig 5mo ago
        [dead]
        16bitvoid 5mo ago
        What does your progress have to do with the name? You're so defensive that you're reasoning with non sequiturs.
        sanity 5mo ago
pikdum 5mo ago
Yeah, I'm not a fan. Feels like this project is trying to get popular off of Freenet's name recognition rather than its own merits.
- koolba 5mo ago
  The submitter is the creator of the original Freenet. If anybody gets to decide what we will call Freenet, it’s him.
  - cheesecompiler 5mo ago
    Does he though?
    - serf 5mo ago
      they most def have a choice as to what to broadcast about..
    - deleted 5mo ago
      [deleted]
  - pikdum 5mo ago
    I'd agree if this was more like a Freenet v3, but it's an entirely different project with completely different goals.
    - sanity 5mo ago
      How are the goals different?
      - cess11 5mo ago
        "Anonymity: While the previous version was designed with a focus on anonymity, the current version does not offer built-in anonymity but allows for a choice of anonymizing systems to be layered on top." https://freenet.org/about/faq/ https://freenet.org/about/faq/
stackghost 5mo ago
>while the old one continues to exist and is maintained under its new name "Hyphanet" Well, that name pretty much dooms the project to a slow death in obscurity.
- tardedmeme 5mo ago
  To play devil's advocate, wasn't it already long dead?
pidgeon_lover 5mo ago
I wasn't very happy as a user with an interest in tech/internet history to find my old bookmarks and notes had been hijacked by the new renamed project. The Original Freenet (Hyphanet) was quite interesting. The new one, less so, especially with the name hijacking.
SuperNinKenDo 5mo ago
Thanks so much for the heads up. I loved Freenet as a concept back in the day and used to devote a significant chunk of my tiny hard drive to trying to help out. I looked it up a few months ago and honestly thought I was experiencing some kind of memory dailure when I saw the new project under that name. Was wondering what the project I was so excited for had _actually_ been called all those years back. Now I know what happened, and where to find the project I actually liked.
dyauspitr 5mo ago
Isn’t anonymity the one and only point of freenet.
seany 5mo ago
anonymity was the main point of freenet... So weird

nightpool 5mo ago

I'm very glad to hear that—the anonymity of the original Freenet has led to it being a very unsavory place that was more well known for CSAM then anything positive or useful. As an outsider, it sounds like this new direction is the right choice for Freenet to try and attract new users and fulfill the team's original goals.

qcl820DV34 5mo ago
Extremely depraved things are not the only thing to use freedom of speech for, and freely speaking can result in all kinds of repressions. And even without agreeing on whether people should be anonymous on the Internet, it could be agreed that replacing a software which guards against a certain threat model (repressions) with one which does not, without changing the name, is not exactly a wise decision.
- sanity 5mo ago
  The new Freenet will support the creation of anonymity systems as services on top of it, which is much better architecturally than tying the platform to one approach to anonymity as I did when I designed the original Freenet. We will also have a decentralized reputation system that will protect people from being exposed to unsavory or illegal content, a common criticism of the old Freenet architecture.
  - serf 5mo ago
    less anonymity and a reputation system? I know you designed the thing, and that was a great effort, but what a miss when compared to the vast majority of freenet users priorities.
    - sanity 5mo ago
      I wouldn't describe it as "less anonymity", it's more that the new Freenet gives applications and users different choices about anonymity depending on their requirements. I don't see how more choice is a bad thing - versus forcing the same (imperfect) solution on everyone as in my original design. Similarly, reputation systems aren't inherently coercive, they're more analogous to spam filtering or trust heuristics, mechanisms for deciding what to prioritize - but ultimate control always remains with the user.
- Forgeties79 5mo ago
  > Extremely depraved things are not the only thing to use freedom of speech for I’m not a fan of “think of the children“ arguments but the Internet cannot actually be a complete free for all and “freedom of speech” is not some magic shield that overrides all other ethical considerations. CSAM is not a particularly high bar and frankly if you want people to throw in with you then you can’t brush it off so lightly.
  - timschmidt 5mo ago
    > I’m not a fan of “think of the children“ arguments Yet you're making one. > the Internet cannot actually be a complete free for all Yet in many important ways, it is. As much as publishers would like to shut down Scihub, it exists. The Pirate Bay famously persists. Nation states with entirely opposed legal systems connect and interoperate to at least some degree.
    - GoblinSlayer 5mo ago
      North Korean Internet will solve ip4 address exhaustion.
    - Forgeties79 5mo ago
      Dude it’s CSAM what are we even doing here.
      - timschmidt 4mo ago
        What's CSAM? All of Freenet? Doubtful. The OP said: "Extremely depraved things are not the only thing to use freedom of speech for, and freely speaking can result in all kinds of repressions." Which is objectively true. You're throwing reporters, political dissidents, whistleblowers, minority groups, and just regular people who don't appreciate the Stasi in with the child pornographers which some might take as an insult and offense. What kind of criminal does Phil Zimmermann look like to you? We had this argument already in the 90s.
    - pessimizer 5mo ago
- nullsanity 5mo ago
  > Extremely depraved things are not the only thing to use freedom of speech for. And yet, it's materially all anonymity is actually for in practice, within a margin of error. Tor - mostly crime & CSAM. Crypto - mostly crime. 4chan - mostly degeneracy, some crime. Faceless Corporations - used for crime, and things that should be crimes, but hide under other names.

sanity 5mo ago

> Notably this project was conceived by a backroom decision to dump the original Freenet development team's work, This is a false narrative, from the Freenet FAQ[1]: Why was Freenet rearchitected and rebranded? In 2019, Ian began developing a successor to the original Freenet, internally named “Locutus.” This redesign was a ground-up reimagining, incorporating lessons learned from the original Freenet and addressing modern challenges. The original Freenet, although groundbreaking, was built for an earlier era. This isn’t the first time Freenet has undergone significant changes. Around 2005, we transitioned from version 0.5 to 0.7, which was a complete rewrite introducing “friend-to-friend” networking. In March 2023, the original Freenet (developed from 2005 onwards) was spun off into an independent project called “Hyphanet” under its existing maintainers. Concurrently, “Locutus” was rebranded as “Freenet,” also known as “Freenet 2023,” to signal this new direction and focus. The rearchitected Freenet is faster, more flexible, and better equipped to offer a robust, decentralized alternative to the increasingly centralized web. To ease the transition the old freenetproject.org domain was redirected to hyphanet’s website, while the recently acquired freenet.org domain was used for the new architecture. It is important to note that the maintainers of the original Freenet did not agree with the decision to rearchitect and rebrand. However, as the architect of the Freenet Project, and after over a year of debate, Ian felt this was the necessary path forward to ensure the project’s continued relevance and success in a world far different than when he designed the previous architecture. > The new "Freenet" does not have anonymity as a design goal anymore, Because the new Freenet will have a menu of anonymity options rather than committing to a one-size-fits-all approach, while also addressing the issue of illegal content[2]. [1] https://freenet.org/about/faq/#why-was-freenet-rearchitected-and-rebranded https://freenet.org/about/faq/#why-was-freenet-rearchitected... [2] https://freenet.org/about/faq/#how-does-freenet-handle-harmful-content https://freenet.org/about/faq/#how-does-freenet-handle-harmf...

qcl820DV34 5mo ago
> and after over a year of debate There was no "year of debate". You came to the mailing list and announced it for the first time as a finalized decision already, without any prior debate with the original team. The "board" you cited as the body which allegedly discussed it did neither join the mailing list discussion, nor were you willing to hand out their contact info. It's all public for anyone to see on the mailing list archive: https://www.mail-archive.com/devl@freenetproject.org/msg55262.html https://www.mail-archive.com/devl@freenetproject.org/msg5526... https://www.mail-archive.com/devl@freenetproject.org/ https://www.mail-archive.com/devl@freenetproject.org/

outside2344 5mo ago

So he forked the project and went his own way. I am not sure I see the issue here. This is how we do open source on the internet. You don't have to join him, but he also has the right to go his own way too.

qcl820DV34 5mo ago
The issue is that the original name, "Freenet", was repurposed for a different codebase.
- sanity 5mo ago
  Different codebase, same purpose. This isn't even the first time we did a ground-up redesign/rewrite of the Freenet codebase, we did this in 2008 with the 0.7 release.
  - qcl820DV34 5mo ago
    Repeating a bad decision does not make it any wiser.
    - sanity 5mo ago
      History will be the judge, and so far it's looking very promising given our progress.
      - darig 5mo ago
        [dead]
      - 16bitvoid 5mo ago
        What does your progress have to do with the name? You're so defensive that you're reasoning with non sequiturs.
        sanity 5mo ago

pikdum 5mo ago

Yeah, I'm not a fan. Feels like this project is trying to get popular off of Freenet's name recognition rather than its own merits.

koolba 5mo ago
The submitter is the creator of the original Freenet. If anybody gets to decide what we will call Freenet, it’s him.
- cheesecompiler 5mo ago
  Does he though?
  - serf 5mo ago
    they most def have a choice as to what to broadcast about..
  - deleted 5mo ago
    [deleted]
- pikdum 5mo ago
  I'd agree if this was more like a Freenet v3, but it's an entirely different project with completely different goals.
  - sanity 5mo ago
    How are the goals different?
    - cess11 5mo ago
      "Anonymity: While the previous version was designed with a focus on anonymity, the current version does not offer built-in anonymity but allows for a choice of anonymizing systems to be layered on top." https://freenet.org/about/faq/ https://freenet.org/about/faq/

stackghost 5mo ago

>while the old one continues to exist and is maintained under its new name "Hyphanet" Well, that name pretty much dooms the project to a slow death in obscurity.

tardedmeme 5mo ago
To play devil's advocate, wasn't it already long dead?

pidgeon_lover 5mo ago

I wasn't very happy as a user with an interest in tech/internet history to find my old bookmarks and notes had been hijacked by the new renamed project. The Original Freenet (Hyphanet) was quite interesting. The new one, less so, especially with the name hijacking.

SuperNinKenDo 5mo ago

Thanks so much for the heads up. I loved Freenet as a concept back in the day and used to devote a significant chunk of my tiny hard drive to trying to help out. I looked it up a few months ago and honestly thought I was experiencing some kind of memory dailure when I saw the new project under that name. Was wondering what the project I was so excited for had _actually_ been called all those years back. Now I know what happened, and where to find the project I actually liked.

dyauspitr 5mo ago

Isn’t anonymity the one and only point of freenet.

seany 5mo ago

anonymity was the main point of freenet... So weird