Comment by sanity
2 years ago
True, they might be referring to that, although if so this is the first time I’ve heard such a complaint in 25 years.
The usage of the term "free-net" to describe early methods of free internet access was quite obscure even in 1999, I only learned of it years after starting Freenet.
Wow, I just remembered that I had an account on one of these "free-net" systems at some point in high school (late 1990s).
It was a much more trusting time in which people routinely gave all kinds of computer access to strangers just to help them out, or in some sense to help the net grow. When my computer club set up a Linux server at our high school, we sort of joined in by happily giving shell accounts to random strangers who had no connection with the school at all. Nobody seemed to think this was a bad idea!
Yes, it reminds me that apparently email in the 1970s didn't even bother with passwords - everyone just had an inbox file that was publicly readable/writable. How times have changed.
"Freenet" already had a very specific meaning in the early ninities which could only be obscure if one was not paying attention. I still maintain my freenet email address from 1991. I recommend you find your own name for your very comendable project, swiping an existing one is confusing and somewhat dodgy.
It may have had that meaning in the early 90s but by the late 90s it was obscure, so much so that the domain freenet.org remained registered but unused from 1999 until I was able to acquire it in 2019.
Calling this "swiping" implies I was aware of the previous meaning, I wasn't. Moreover, in 25 years this may be the first time someone has complained about it.
In any case, this is all ancient history at this point.
The particular swiping in question happened a couple of decades ago now (I agree that it was a confusing ambiguity at the time); the proposed swiping now could also be a confusing ambiguity, but would be by the same people who were responsible for the prior swiping.
I disagree that any "swiping" took place as I wasn't aware of the prior meaning because hardly anyone was using it in 1999, nor did anyone bring it up at the time.
Similarly, no swiping took place more recently unless you think using the name of my own project is "swiping". I address this in more detail in a recent [1] reddit comment.
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/Freenet/comments/1d05zw9/questions_...
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The only other Freenet I know is (was?) a small ISP and Freemail provider in Germany. I couldn't care less about the name clash.
Freenet AG is now a pretty big mobile phone provider since it bought the biggest carrier-independent mobile phone contract provider.
Revenue about 2.5 billion Euro.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freenet_AG
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