Author: toad Date: 2006-11-29 18:46:08 +0000 (Wed, 29 Nov 2006) New Revision: 11112
Modified: trunk/website/pages/news.php Log: SoC summary. Needs some trimming. Modified: trunk/website/pages/news.php =================================================================== --- trunk/website/pages/news.php 2006-11-29 15:27:24 UTC (rev 11111) +++ trunk/website/pages/news.php 2006-11-29 18:46:08 UTC (rev 11112) @@ -14,6 +14,49 @@ our <a href="/donate.html">donations page</a>. --> <h3>News</h3> +<b>29 November, 2006 - Summer of Code roundup</b><br> +As you know, Google paid for four students to work for us full-time over the summer, +as part of their Summer of Code project (cost at least $12,000 to Google). Here's a +summary of all the good things that came out of this: +<ul> +<li><b>Freemail</b> (dbkr)<br> +dbkr wrote an email server which uses Freenet as a back-end. This is one +of the features which is most asked-for by groups in repressive regimes, +and fills an important hole in Freenet's current functionality (we have +web sites, we have discussion boards, we don't really have private +messaging). This is now working, its architecture is complete, and it +will be bundled with Freenet soon.</li> +<li><b>Load simulations</b> (mrogers)<br> +mrogers wrote us an event-based simulator for evaluating proposed +changes to Freenet routing, load balancing and data storage. In the past +we have generally deployed changes in a fairly haphazard way, and it has +often not been clear whether a particular change has been beneficial. +Since we started work on 0.7 we have been more systematic, but the +simulations we have built were not able to simulate many of the more +complex processes, such as load balancing / load limiting. mrogers has +produced a detailed simulation which has already yielded insights into +congestion control, has confirmed some of our recent decisions on load +balancing, and is being used to prototype a new load management +algorithm which should radically improve Freenet's performance.</li> +<li><b>Installer improvements and related stuff</b> (nextgens)<br> +Over the summer nextgens, an experienced freenet developer already, +worked on what was most urgently needed for Freenet, and which he had +most expertise in, but wasn't necessarily most interesting. His work +related mostly to deployment: The installer, the uninstaller, the +updating system, the mirror network, native libraries and general +bugfixing. All of this has been deployed already and has enhanced +Freenet's usability. He also did some work on getting Freenet to work +on free JVMs, which has yielded some results.</li> +<li><b>Thaw (filesharing utility and upload/download manager)</b> (jflesch)<br> +Over the summer jflesch developed Thaw. Thaw's goals were firstly to +provide a user-friendly, cross platform interface to the built-in +Freenet download manager engine (replacing an older Windows-only tool +called FUQID), and secondly to evolve into a complete file sharing +application via sharing file indexes. The first goal has been 100% +fulfilled and Thaw is now the preferred tool. The second goal has been +partially achieved; Thaw has working functionality for searching file +indexes, but this is not yet used very much.</li> +</ul><p>All in all, a great success!</p> <b>17th August, 2006 - John Gilmore donates US$15,000 to the Freenet Project</b> [<a href="http://digg.com/software/John_Gilmore_donates_US_15_000_to_the_Freenet_Project";>digg it</a>]<br> John Gilmore, one of the founders of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Cypherpunks mailing list, and Cygnus Solutions, has donated US$15,000 to the Freenet Project, to support the ongoing development of the Freenet software. <p>
