I do not give permission for any microscopic amount of code that may exist of mine in current freenet to be tagged GPL V2 or later, GPL V2 only for me.
I won't go into the reasons for this, they are well discussed by the document recently published by the linux kernel developers. --Brandon On 2006-09-27 (Wed) at 00:31:51 +0100, Matthew Toseland wrote: > Freenet status report, 26/09/06 > ------------------------------- > > 0. Status Report. > > The last time I put out a status report was in March. The last time Ian > put out one was in July. Clearly a lot has changed since then! > > ToC: > > 1. Financial. > > John Gilmore, one of the founder members of the EFF, the Cypherpunks > list and Cygnus Solutions, gave us a donation of $15,000, as you may > have heard. This means we are okay for 6 months or so. However, that > does not mean all our financial problems are over. At present we have > around $10,000 in the bank, and $1,200 in the paypal. (And the last time > Ian checked, nothing in e-gold). He may give us some more when we run > out, but then again he may not, and we don't want to be dependant on a > single source anyway. > > 2. Google Summer of Code > > We have participated in the Google Summer of Code this summer. This > means that we have had four students, all paid $4,500 by Google, working > full time for us (instead of working in the fast food industry): > > Michael Rogers - Has been developing a set of detailed simulations of > Freenet, with an eye to both low-level congestion control and high-level > load balancing. We have had extensive discussions on low level changes > and have a proposal for high level load limiting which will shortly be > simulated and finalized before being implemented. This will hopefully > solve many of Freenet's current performance problems. > > Dave Baker - Has rewritten Freemail for Freenet 0.7. Freemail is exactly > what it says: An email system using Freenet as a transport mechanism. It > provides an IMAP4 and SMTP interface, so you can use it with a regular > mail client. It may also in future have a webmail interface. While I use > Frost regularly, IMHO it is important that we have this functionality, > because it will be of significant use in hostile environments, and > because it will help to knit together the anonymous an offline > communities. > > Jerome Flesch - Thaw. If you haven't tried Thaw yet, try it. It's better > than FUQID, and it has the beginnings of index searching support. > > Nextgens (Florent Daigniere) - Various work on the installer, general > debugging, packaging etc. Currently working on low-level encryption > (Station to Station protocol). > > I hear that Google is organizing a conference for mentors, with up to 2 > per organization invited (me and ian) and most expenses paid. :) > > 3. License change > > I am attempting to change the license from freenet from not being > specified at all in most files, with just the GPL included in the > license file, to explicitly GPL 2 or later. If you have contributed code > to Freenet and haven't already contacted me about this, please do so. I > am quite willing to reconsider this (with ian), but only one person has > objected so far. Once we have permission from all authors for "GPL 2 or > later", we will be able to upgrade to GPL 3 when it comes out. But this > will not happen automatically; I hope it will be debated properly and we > will move forward, or not, on a consensus. We may leave it as it is. One > advantage of GPL 3 is that it allows us to include Apache Software > License (1.1/2.0) code, such as the Apache Commons code, especially the > Commons Compress library. We can arguably do this anyway, but the FSF > says the licenses are incompatible. Hedging our bets by making the main > code "GPL 2 or later", and including the ASL2 code, may be best. > > 4. Opennet and darknet > > At present, Freenet 0.7 only implements darknet. That means you have to > add people manually. The theory is that you only add the nodes belonging > to people you actually know, thus forming a true darknet. A true darknet > is highly robust, virtually invisible, and far more secure than an > opennet. Unfortunately in practice people true darknet connections are > rare; most people get most of their links from #freenet-refs . The > result is that we have what is effectively an opennet, with all of its > disadvantages, and without its convenience. So, Ian and I have agreed > that we need to implement a true opennet. This would give better > performance, and be far more convenient. > > However, there have been many discussions on both sides; several > developers have serious reservations about opennet, and everyone else in > the entire universe seems to think that because you know your peers you > can't possibly be anonymous. This is the equivalent of an ostrich > sticking its head in the sand on the grounds that if he can't see the > large creature about to eat him, then the large creature can't see him. > You have to be connected to some nodes, if you want to be part of > Freenet. You are vulnerable to those nodes you are connected to. On both > Freenet 0.5 and Freenet 0.7, your peers can do correlation attacks > against you. But on a true darknet, you get to choose your peers, rather > than them being assigned by the network. > > The simple fact is that true darknet is *far* more secure than opennet > of any kind. Not only is it invisible, but you get to choose who you > connect to. An opennet is far easier to attack, because the attacker can > harvest all nodes, then connect to all nodes, not necessarily all at > once, and observe each one. Freenet 0.8 will have "premix routing", a > layer of onion routing before we start the request. This probably will > not be implemented for opennet, because there is little point. An > attacker would simply pretend to be many nodes, and take over your > routing table. > > So, despite "common sense", and despite the seemingly deliberate > propaganda campaign by certain individuals against darknet, we need to: > a) implement opennet AND > b) give people every reason to move from pure opennet to hybrid > opennet/darknet to pure darknet, by adding connections to their friends. > > Thus, we get a large network with opennet, and then people discover that > their friends are already on freenet, and connect to them. In the long > term we will have both a large opennet and a large darknet. > > How do we accomplish b)? > 1) Education. See above: Darknet is far more secure than opennet. > 2) Preferential routing. Your node should prefer to route queries from > your darknet peers - your friends - than for random opennet nodes. (This > needs to be simulated, but in principle appears sound). > 3) Making it easy. Node reference files now end in .fref. Such files are > automatically added to the node's routing table when you double click on > them (the other side must also add yours), in Windows. There is a list, > darknet-tools, for the development of IRC client plugins and so on, > although nobody seems interested in it at the moment. > > So in conclusion: > - We need opennet to get users. > - We need opennet users to move to darknet. > - In the long term we need the darknet to be bigger than the opennet. > > 5. Network size. > > Over a 48-hour period, my node shows 498 node locations seen. However, a > different means of estimating network size, the new PROBEALL: function on > the console (telnet 127.0.0.1 2323, type PROBEALL:, then tail -f > wrapper.log), shows 127 nodes online at a given instant. The probe > function may be buggy, or we may have very high network churn, as people > install freenet, try it out, and uninstall it. > > 6. Client layer, and content. > > There remain a number of major changes that need to be done to the > client layer, for example multi-container freesite inserts. However, > there are 154 sites on The Public Index, and there are 3 actively > updated indexes including TPI (which is good but can't be included by > default as it is publicly writable). That's against around 440 sites on > TFE a while ago, on the 0.5 network. Most of the client layer is ready; > for example, there is only one significant known issue with the content > filter now. There are of course more things to do, but most of them are > not vital for 0.7. > > 7. Other changes > > Several major changes have been made in the last few months. STUN > support has been added, so the node should be able to auto-detect its IP > address most of the time even if it is behind a NAT. The datastore has > been split into a long-term store and a short-term cache. Inserts of > single files resume automatically on node restart. Splitfiles heal > themselves. And there have been minor improvements to routing and load > balancing, although for the latter to really fly we need to complete > mrogers' work. And many bugfixes. All since July, when Ian last > published a status report. > > 7. Future priorities, and alpha? > > TODO: > - More bug fixes. (There are *always* more bugs. A lot of what we've > been doing for the last several months have been bug fixes and minor > features; if you haven't tried freenet for a while try it again). > - STS. (Better link encryption; major progress towards this already, > thanks to nextgens). > - Multi-container freesites. (Big freesites currently have problems > because only the first 2MB is containerised). > - Contact the last few authors somehow and change the license. > - Low-level congestion control changes (when mrogers writes them up). > - High-level load limiting (when mrogers has simulated it and finalized > the design). > - Opennet. > > We should seriously think about putting out another alpha in the > reasonably near future, but maybe we should wait until load limiting has > been sorted out? > _______________________________________________ > Support mailing list > Support at freenetproject.org > http://news.gmane.org/gmane.network.freenet.support > Unsubscribe at http://emu.freenetproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/support > Or mailto:support-request at freenetproject.org?subject=unsubscribe
