Recent versions of Opera include a web server. This runs locally on the browser's host system and Opera provide a proxy service to deal with dynamic DNS and firewall issues. They do not host or cache content, and the web site is only available when the computer is up and reachable. The whole thing is designed to be easy to use and has several other components e.g. filesharing. The objective is for you to be in control of your files, and to not rely on some big, potentially evil company who may go bust and take your data with them (of course the need for a proxying service contradicts this, but it could be run by anyone...)
IMHO this is something that we can usefully compare to Freenet: EASE OF USE: Opera Unite: Designed to be as easy to use as social networking sites. Freenet: *SHOULD BE* designed to be as easy to use as social networking sites! Far from that level at present. UPLOADING: Opera Unite: No need to upload anything. Serve straight from local directories for filesharing, web sites. However, for blog type stuff, presumably they have a wizard. Freenet: Need to upload stuff. Uploading is slow. However, using Youtube or wherever also requires uploading for anything beyond text: people are used to uploading, although maybe not quite as slow as on Freenet! UPTIME ISSUES: Opera Unite: The site is only online while the computer hosting it is online. IMHO this severely limits the usefulness of Opera Unite given the modern computing demographics. Freenet: The site is online for as long as people keep accessing it. However, an individual Freenet node will be slow if it is not online for a reasonable period. DOWNLOAD PERFORMANCE: Opera Unite: Limited by connection speed. Severely affected by slashdot effect. For files or popular sites, on slow connections, could be very slow Freenet: Limited by network speed. Strongly boosted by slashdot effect. Speed of local connection of the content author is irrelevant. Content of Evil was uploaded from a dial-up modem for several years! ACCESSIBILITY FROM THE REGULAR INTERNET: Opera Unite: Perfectly accessible from the regular internet and designed to be so. Dependant in most cases on central proxy network, which doesn't have to be provided by Opera. Freenet: Not accessible from the regular internet unless people set up public proxies. Doing so appears to be legal at least in USA. Generally does not require any third party infrastructure. PRIVACY/CONTROL: Opera Unite: Instant control over what is posted: You can delete a file, an entry, etc, and it immediately takes effect. However, this is a false sense of security: Anyone who has downloaded an earlier copy will still have it. Dependant on Opera or somebody else for proxying services behind firewalls in many cases. No anonymity whatsoever. Freenet: No conrol over what has already been uploaded. Strong anonymity (at least relatively speaking). FUNCTIONALITY: Opera: Website (from directory on disk), filesharing (presumably without global search), audio/video, photos, blog, "fridge" (post-it notes), "lounge" (chat), 30 services total ... Freenet: Website (from directory on disk), filesharing (without easy to use global search), blog, chat (with plugins or external apps), ... CONCLUSIONS IMHO there are several key areas we need to work on: 1. Uptime. We should regard Freenet not working well if it has low uptime as a bug, and fix it. There are various opportunities to improve opennet low uptime performance and we should take advantage of them. Also, we should make it easy for users to start and stop Freenet (via the systray icon), and to make it not start on startup (ditto). Of course, darknet requires higher uptimes, especially if it is sparse. 2. Ease of use. It should be as easy to share files and create a website on Freenet as it is on blogger, facebook, youtube, etc. And of course we need chat working well and integrated. 3. Accessibility from the regular internet. According to ibiblio's lawyers, they could run a public gateway for us. We discussed this and then lapsed into nothing. It would be worth chasing it up again. 4. Downloading is slow. This is very important. But we are already faster than Opera Unite in many cases. 5. Uploading is slow. This is maybe not as big an issue as others, but we should work on it when possible. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: signature.asc Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 835 bytes Desc: This is a digitally signed message part. URL: <https://emu.freenetproject.org/pipermail/devl/attachments/20100114/beb5a8c1/attachment.pgp>
