Re: I2P flamewar

Sorry my other letter only went to toad :o).  I also made a few corrections :P.

On 4/11/05, Matthew Toseland <toad-EI5O+8PHWbJeeLb3ft/[email protected]> wrote:
> SSK@PF2aP9hyEmi5KM8jUEB8cdAQiSEPAgM,jE74sxXWItDZoYdW82JKJg/signal/69//
>
> The article under "Freenet is dead!". Is he right about I2P?

Well, it is kind of a biased sample only asking people who are running
Freenet to ask for their opinions :P, but since I run both Freenet and
I2P (although not at the same time, jesus please work on decreasing
the memory foot print with these java apps) I can offer some opinions.

I'll quote the article, and I have a complete copy at the end for
people to read if they do not have Freenet installed.  As well, if you
are running I2P i believe there is a Freenet gateway still up, I've
used it but not in the last 5 months.

>From the article:
>I can't imagine something like the above blockquote being made by Ian
or Toad, partly >because, frankly, Freenet doesn't have that many
people willing to contribute so frequently >or significantly. I don't.
Not in the code category anyway, and that's the part that matters.

The reason why I2P is getting so many developers helping out is
because of the nature of its design.  Since its a network layer it is
*designed* to allow *other* developers to create applications for it.
These other developers do not need to know a lot about anonymity,
encryption and network archetecture since I2P does the heavy lefting
in those departments.

As well, since I2P is so broad in scope (HTTP, FTP, NNTP, IRC,
anonymous games like Freeciv which I played with Thetower and Cneal)
and can potentially a wide variety of internet service anonymously it
attracts a variety of developers as well.

In short it is its broad scope and the ease (relatively speaking) to
which it can anonymize 'regular' internet applications is why it is so
successful.

In general I do not think Freenet will die, although I see the
vitality with the AntsP2P and Mute projects with the variety of
developers and forks taking place with it.  Freenet is monolithic, and
although I believe it could have benefited from some other 'competing'
freenet fork projects I don't think Freenet Freenet devels were
willing to cooperate and encourage new ideas and competing projects as
much as it could have, and that's (cooperation) the name of the game
with open source development :).

In addition to its design I believe that cooperation is why I2P is
doing so well. Jrandom and the I2P developers have been working with
the people of
Azeureus to make a working anonymous bit torrent client for I2P (in
addition to one made for it), working with the people of FreeBSD to
have I2P included in one of its distributions.  It's this cooperation
that is likely the primary driver of I2P's success, and less to do with the 
design of I2P (although large scope to attract ppl to anonymize their
programs relatively easily is important also :P).  As well Jrandom
listens to the 'peanut
gallery'  (if I am part of the peanut gallery which I guess i am ;) )
with consideration and explains things to people as well.

It would be useful if Toad and other Freenet devls were to come and
just pay a visit to #I2P.  Toad always used to be on IIP, and IIP and
I2P (2 irc servers) are merged (i believe) now.  What I2P lacks is a
Freenet type distributed content hashkey program which I believe is
useful because it allows for content to be hosted 24/7 without a
direct connect to the content on the host computer, and it allows
content to be inserted and then securly wiped, Freenet could help make
that happen.  (P.S. work has been partially done in doing a freenet
port to i2p by aum [of freemail] called Stasher, and now on his newer
and less freenet-like [not FCP compatible?] QuarterMaster.

Anyway lots of ideas here and ppl won't bother to read it if its too
long (if they read it at all ;) ).

S M / Synonymous

== Article ==
Freenet; Survey

Jrandom, of I2P fame, had this to say on the i2p mailing list a couple
of days ago:

   The release process on this one has gone slower than usual, as we
wanted to monitor the long(er) term behavior of each build to minimize
any regressions. The testers following CVS have braved OOMs, NPEs,
hosed CPUs, and even munged IRC sessions to kill these bugs, and I
can't imagine how much slower and error prone the development process
would be going without their help. Many thanks to duck, cervantes,
Tracker, smeghead, detonate and the rest of the people on #i2p and the
forum for their hard work both breaking and helping to fix I2P.

That's pretty nice of him say that. I wonder why the Freenet Project
is not working as well as this.

Certainly a lot of it is that Jrandom is an intelligent person, and
knows how to produce results. But I think part of it is also the fact
that the I2P is, while not exactly easy, at least easier to address
than what the Freenet Project is trying to accomplish. But I sometimes
wonder if the Project itself needs a reset, not just the code.

I can't imagine something like the above blockquote being made by Ian
or Toad, partly because, frankly, Freenet doesn't have that many
people willing to contribute so frequently or significantly. I don't.
Not in the code category anyway, and that's the part that matters.

What's the Freenet Project worth to you? Digest that question for a
moment, and then let me ask you a different question... What's the
Freenet Project worth to you? I'm not talking about money. I'm not
asking you how much you like it, and god knows I'm not asking you what
Captain Crusader Secret Messages you're passing through it. I just
want to know if Freenet is something that's worth your time.

So does Sonax, apparently. He's put up a freesite called Freenet
Survey 1.00, in which he asks, "Who is the average freenet user?".
Check it out. Consider answering. It's information that I, for one,
would be very much interested in knowing. More importantly, it's
information that would help the project, in a general,
not-quite-verifiable way. He doesn't say, but I feel certain that the
collected information will be re-disseminated to the interested
public. Besides, the raw data is all available in KSKs.
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