On Thu, Aug 17, 2000 at 10:44:25AM +0700, Oskar Sandberg wrote: > Thinking that we will not be forced to break protocol compatibility many > times yet is wishfull thinking. There are still more unresolved then I > care to think about (I have yet to see any particularly encouraging > results out of Serapis).
Well, it seems that Freenet is capable of retrieving information with reasonable reliability with just the 0.2 version (provided that information is not permitted to stagnate - this is more an issue with user-friendliness than the underlying technology) - hopefully the various non-crypto improvements and bug-fixes in 0.3 will improve this further, and more friendly clients will encourage people to request information which should prevent older stuff from being dropped from the system. > Freenet will not be done in a couple of months. It will not be done in a > year and a couple of months either. People who can't wait for that would > best look elsewhere. It depends what you mean by "done" - they say a work of art is never finished, just abandoned. Of course there will always be improvements to be made to the system, but it is pointless to keep saying to people "don't use this yet", rather let them try it and decide for themselves, if it does what they want it to do , then so-be-it. There is much to be said for being ultra-cautious in making claims as to the readiness of Freenet, however there will come a time when people get tired of hearing us say "not yet" and will move on to something which is not as good, but where the authors are content to claim that it is complete. There are numerous examples of technically superior systems being overshadowed by less-ambitious but available alternatives: Linux & GNU Hurd (see http://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/hurd-and-linux.html) being a prime example. Remember the ESR motto - "Release early, release often". I am well aware that it is important not to over-sell ourselves for reasons of professional integrity (something all-to-easily forgotten in this day and age, particularly when you spend all of your time talking to the media as I now seem to), but we must be cautious not to under-sell our work either when there are so many people willing to describe essentially stupid ideas as the "next big thing" (do I hear "push" technology?). Ian. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 232 bytes Desc: not available URL: <https://emu.freenetproject.org/pipermail/devl/attachments/20000817/254d74be/attachment.pgp>
