Short summary of the discussion with the original author: He wants to help with implementing a filesharing app on top of Freenet. He originally wanted to go for Torrent over Freenet, but I said that its doubtful whether it makes sense to try to force Torrent to do something which it wasn't designed for (anonymity).
(Bertm: CC to you due to your recent video streaming work, search below for "video") On Tuesday, January 13, 2015 06:12:16 PM Christopher Bonnie wrote: > You can publish my concept as much as your like, transparency is a big > thing for me. OK great, CCing to the development mailing list. > Yes I can see when you explain it in detail that torrenting > wouldn't be the best method of file sharing due to the risk it poses to the > person and since freenet is designed to be anonymous it's best to leave > something that could cause an exploit out of it. Great that we can agree upon developing something Freenet-based without force- involving torrent :) With regards to the implementation, I have the following suggestion: Separate it into two components: 1. File upload tool. The user specifies a folder whose content to share. The tool automatically uploads the contents of the folder, and keeps monitoring it for new files. This is the easier tool of both. 2. File publishing tool. The more difficult part. I would suggest recycling one of our existing forum system implementations, to publish files as attachments to forum threads. This seems like an easy path because forum systems already support two important concepts: - Publishing content to many users. A forum thread in the current implementations typically is visible to most of the users. - Categorizing content by types. Threads are categorized into sub-forums such as "en.politics.usa". These categories could also be "downloads.files.audio", and thus serve the purpose of allowing file-type based search. The file upload tool would use API of the file publishing tool to publish its uploads. Due to the fact that an API abstraction will be involved, it could be developed before the publishing tool is actually implemented. Thus IMHO it would make sense to start with the upload tool as the easier of both, to get you warmed up with Freenet development in general. While we can discuss the technical details here, I would suggest you also join us on IRC, see below... > Assuming you're the only developer for Freenet > and I'm not going to question whom else you work on > it with because that's information that I don't truly need to know nor do I > feel safe sharing over a unsecure life[...] There are currently 89 people on the IRC channel. Not all of those are developers for sure, but there are quite a few. I would also suggest you to join the IRC channel because thats where most developer activity happens IMHO. The channel is #freenet on the Freenode IRC network. https://freenetproject.org/irc.html IRC is not anonymous though. In theory, Freenet can also anonymously be developed over itself. We don't involve in illegal activities, and do not consider Freenet itself as illegal, as it is merely a communication network, so anonymous development is not yet any majority. The forum system "FMS" which is based on Freenet is probably the best place for communicating anonymously with the team. It can be found in the default bookmarks. But IRC is still the most convenient and IMHO also the most widely used tool. > It also would be interesting if there was a video-sharing/viewing platform > as the standard means are being controlled by private corporations and tend > to focus on the share holder over the user. Bertm recently did a proof of concept which shows that Freenet is in fact fast enough for video streaming nowadays. However AFAIK this was very low level, not efforts have been made to write a video sharing platform. I do think that forums would also be suitable for video sharing. The video sharing thing would be just another GUI on top of the forums. > I would be interested in > conversation more if you can suggest a more secure method to contact you > that isn't controlled by said corporations. My GnuPG key fingerprint is on my flog (Freenet blog) which is in the Freenet default bookmarks. You can send me encrypted mail using that key. However I think its better to cooperate with the whole team as suggested above. I don't plan to discuss anything illegal anyway :) > Best wishes. > > On Mon, Jan 12, 2015 at 6:44 AM, xor <x...@freenetproject.org> wrote: > > On Friday, January 09, 2015 08:45:13 AM Christopher Bonnie wrote: > > > I was thinking of standalone project but since freenet is the only > > > > network > > > > > out there that I wouldn't have to worry about government censorship I > > > > think > > > > > it would be best to be run through the freenet network. > > > > Great, thanks for supporting us with considering that :) > > > > The next logical question would be: Why do you want to use torrents? > > Without considering your individual project, but from general news > > browsing, I > > feel much development effort is put into recycling BitTorrent for stuff > > which it > > wasn't designed for merely because it is popular. > > > > For example the fact that users who are currently downloading a single > > file are > > organized into a swarm would neither be needed nor be wanted on Freenet: > > - Not needed because: The hash of a file determines its Freenet "location" > > on > > the network. The "location" is a floating point number between 0 and 1. > > Each > > Freenet peer has such a location assigned to itself, independent of files. > > By > > computing a location from a file hash, it is determined that the peers > > which > > have a similar location will store it. Thus, data self-organizes into > > being > > stored at the right machines, just like swarms in torrent. No further code > > is > > needed to be pulled from torrent for that. > > - Not wanted because revealing the fact that that you as an individual > > user > > are currently downloading a file allows attackers to focus upon tracing > > your > > requests. It makes you vulnerable to de-anonymization. The purpose of > > revealing "who is downloading what" with torrent is only to allow swarming > > which Freenet implicitly provides by location based networking as > > explained > > above anyway. > > > > Luckily, implementing filesharing on Freenet from scratch, without basing > > it > > upon something else, would not be difficult: Freenet already supports > > upload of > > arbitrarily large files, and can spew out an URI for the upload. > > All which Freenet is missing for filesharing currently is: > > - Folder-based sharing such as with eMule etc: A plugin to automatically > > upload the contents of a directory which the user wants to share > > - A mechanism for publishing the uploaded files, and for searching among > > files > > which others have uploaded. > > > > For both the above, there are existing implementations which provide part > > of > > the functionality, so albeit months of work, it would still be a compact > > project. > > Filesharing is the #1 requested feature for Freenet on uservoice [1], and > > it > > would be highly appreciated if someone implemented it on top of Freenet. > > > > Also, I did spend quite a bit of time thinking about how it should be > > implemented, because I am likely to be responsible for implementing it > > after > > my current sub-project is finished. So I can walk you through all the > > required > > steps, you just have to ask :) > > > > Next step for you would be to think about whether you really want this to > > be a > > Torrent project, or whether you'd like to do a clean implementation which > > focused on what would be the ideal technology for Freenet. > > > > PS: Please tell me whether I may CC this to the public Freenet development > > mailing list. > > > > Thanks for your efforts & greetings, > > > > xor, Freenet client application maintainer > > > > [1] http://freenet.uservoice.com/forums/8861-general > > > > > On Thu, Jan 8, 2015 at 4:02 PM, xor <x...@freenetproject.org> wrote: > > > > On Tuesday, January 06, 2015 04:05:05 AM Christopher Bonnie wrote: > > > > > First off I would like to thank you for creating a tool for the > > > > internet > > > > > > > that allows true decentralized secure networking, all your hard work > > > > and > > > > > > > dedication makes so many peoples lives secure. > > > > > > > > Thank you :) > > > > > > > > > Since you know peer to peer networking and I just know the surface > > > > of it > > > > > > I > > > > > > > > > did have a little side project concept that I'd feel like you'd be > > > > the > > > > > > > person who'd know how to go about it. A basic program that functions > > > > as > > > > > > > a > > > > > search engine for magnet links and torrents as well as storing > > > > torrent > > > > > > > information on the users computer. Using the same technology that's > > > > used > > > > > > > for freenet but instead of storing webfiles you store torrent files > > > > and > > > > > > > magnet links. It's just a small thing that I've been considered over > > > > > time > > > > > but I don't have the networking skills in order to make it a reality > > > > but > > > > > > > might as well pitch it to someone that does, anyway thank you for > > > > > freenet > > > > > and all your support, I'll be sure by this friday I'll give a small > > > > > donation to help fund your work. > > > > > > > > Do you plan for this to run on top of Freenet? > > > > > > > > My Freenet TODO list is currently insanely large, and thus if I start > > > > helping > > > > with other projects, I would like them to be Freenet-based at least. > > > > > > > > Thanks for asking me already! > > > > > > > > Greetings
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