Matthew Toseland wrote: > Most Freenet users are likely > to be non-geeks who won't run their computers 24x7 for various good reasons:
You might well be right, but in that case we need to ask some difficult questions: * Is it even possible to build a scalable, robust, distributed cache where most of the nodes are offline most of the time and some of them only connect to their friends? * If it is possible, do we have a clear idea of how to build it, or are we just piling systems on top of each other? * What kind of applications can such a network support? What kind of applications should it not even try to support? > I'm not convinced. Freenet is not defined by its real-time behaviour, so much > as by its goals (censorship resistant datastore), and its need to build a > global f2f darknet to support those goals. I think you've hit the nail on the head - Freenet has always been defined by the broad goal of censorship resistance rather than by concrete use cases, and as a result the means of achieving that goal keep changing. For example, should Freenet support real-time communication? Long-term storage? Small, isolated darknets connected to the main network by camel caravan? A large darknet in China and a large darknet in the West joined by a handful of cross-border links? > And longer term it'd be great if we could have e.g. audio > streams. And a pony. ;-) Cheers, Michael
