I really don't understand all of this fretting and hand-wringing
about opennet. Its basically nothing more than a vastly better way
for people to do what they are already doing today with hideous (but
regrettably necessary) kludges like #freenet-refs and http://refex.s-
coding.nl/.
But there are some differences:
With an opennet:
Imagine that a gouvernement, like China or France, decides to prevent the
access to the opennet: They would just have to fetch as many as possible IPs,
and then filter massively these IP (--> all the opennet and opennet/darknet
nodes). They would have no difficulties to do that with an opennet, they
could easily update their blacklist, and they could even find some unwise
Freenet users in their own country.
I don't know if it's really possible in China, but it would probably be in
France if the gouvernement really want to.
With a darknet:
Firstly, people don't share their refs only on #freenet-refs, but also on
#freenet-refs, the Frost board "freenet-refs", and hopefully, in private.
It would make an automatic process really harder to define.
Secondly, even if they try to fetch as many as possible refs, there are the
already-established nodes which won't be found since their owners don't have
anymore to share their refs.
And to finish, most of the users have a changing IP, making the filtration
harder.
Another point is that an user can know its peers: I know that most of the
current freenet users doesn't care about this possibility. But for my part, I
find that really really great. For example, when one of my peers is too often
backed off, I can discuss with him/her on IRC to try to solve this problem.
At the moment, I think the darknet is a really great particularity of Freenet.
It's one of the things, which make it really singular.
But I'm not entirely against an opennet: Indeed, an opennet could bring us
more users. And if a gouvernement decides to block the access to Freenet,
they will probably only filter the opennet, and omit the darknet. However, if
you implement opennet, I think it would be a good thing to add to the wiki a
list of the countries where the opennet can be used safely and where it's
not.
Opennet has the following advantages over what people are using now:
- Several orders of magnitude more convenient for users (allowing
ease of use approaching or exceeding mainstream P2P apps)
- Decentralized and scalable
- Should lead to vastly better network topology
- We control it so we can take measures to make it more difficult to
corrupt
Disadvantages? Relative to what people are using now - none that I
can think of.
Some people may wish we lived in a fantasy world where everyone was
willing to go through the trouble of carefully establishing trusted
darknet connections, but we don't live in this world, and denying the
clear advantages of opennet to our userbase will not lead to that
fantasy.
Ian.
Ian Clarke: Co-Founder & Chief Scientist Revver, Inc.
phone: 323.871.2828 | personal blog - http://locut.us/blog
