Comment by qcl820DV34
3 days ago
Notably this project was conceived by a backroom decision to dump the original Freenet development team's work,
in favor of a rewrite from different developers, without asking anyone on the original team.
It was an ivory tower decision which was announced on the mailing list without prior discussion.
The old team did not agree, yet it was forced through by a decision of the "board".
The "board" was a group of people which had not been active on the project for over a decade.
https://www.mail-archive.com/devl@freenetproject.org/msg5526...
The funding of the existing, original "Freenet" was repurposed for the new one of course.
The new "Freenet" does not have anonymity as a design goal anymore,
while the old one continues to exist and is maintained under its new name "Hyphanet" at:
Yeah, I'm not a fan. Feels like this project is trying to get popular off of Freenet's name recognition rather than its own merits.
The submitter is the creator of the original Freenet. If anybody gets to decide what we will call Freenet, it’s him.
I'd agree if this was more like a Freenet v3, but it's an entirely different project with completely different goals.
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That’s not how contributing money to the success of a specific thing should be able to work at all.
> If anybody gets to decide what we will call Freenet, it’s him.
Perhaps.
Though reusing the name for an entirely different project with a different codebase is disingenuous to say the least.
That won't do his reputation any good, especially in a field where reputation matters.
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Does he though?
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> Notably this project was conceived by a backroom decision to dump the original Freenet development team's work,
This is a false narrative, from the Freenet FAQ[1]:
Why was Freenet rearchitected and rebranded?
In 2019, Ian began developing a successor to the original Freenet, internally named “Locutus.” This redesign was a ground-up reimagining, incorporating lessons learned from the original Freenet and addressing modern challenges. The original Freenet, although groundbreaking, was built for an earlier era.
This isn’t the first time Freenet has undergone significant changes. Around 2005, we transitioned from version 0.5 to 0.7, which was a complete rewrite introducing “friend-to-friend” networking.
In March 2023, the original Freenet (developed from 2005 onwards) was spun off into an independent project called “Hyphanet” under its existing maintainers. Concurrently, “Locutus” was rebranded as “Freenet,” also known as “Freenet 2023,” to signal this new direction and focus. The rearchitected Freenet is faster, more flexible, and better equipped to offer a robust, decentralized alternative to the increasingly centralized web.
To ease the transition the old freenetproject.org domain was redirected to hyphanet’s website, while the recently acquired freenet.org domain was used for the new architecture.
It is important to note that the maintainers of the original Freenet did not agree with the decision to rearchitect and rebrand. However, as the architect of the Freenet Project, and after over a year of debate, Ian felt this was the necessary path forward to ensure the project’s continued relevance and success in a world far different than when he designed the previous architecture.
> The new "Freenet" does not have anonymity as a design goal anymore,
Because the new Freenet will have a menu of anonymity options rather than committing to a one-size-fits-all approach, while also addressing the issue of illegal content[2].
[1] https://freenet.org/about/faq/#why-was-freenet-rearchitected...
[2] https://freenet.org/about/faq/#how-does-freenet-handle-harmf...
> and after over a year of debate
There was no "year of debate".
You came to the mailing list and announced it for the first time as a finalized decision already,
without any prior debate with the original team.
The "board" you cited as the body which allegedly discussed it did neither join the mailing list discussion,
nor were you willing to hand out their contact info.
It's all public for anyone to see on the mailing list archive:
https://www.mail-archive.com/devl@freenetproject.org/msg5526...
https://www.mail-archive.com/devl@freenetproject.org/
WTF. These are some of the first things I clicked through on that page:
- https://www.mail-archive.com/devl@freenetproject.org/msg5534...
- https://www.mail-archive.com/devl@freenetproject.org/msg5534...
Gee, I can't imagine how that mailing list could ever be toxic.
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There was no public debate, but he did start to talk to devs 18 months before, and the devs told him quite clearly that they strongly object to repurposing the name.
And that repurposing the name would cause lots of damage.
> There was no "year of debate".
Incorrect, I raised the issue with the lead maintainer over a year prior to that announcement.
> You came to the mailing list and declared it as a finalized decision.
As the project's architect I'm entitled to make decisions about the project's future direction.
> It's all public for anyone to see on the mailing list archive:
> https://www.mail-archive.com/devl@freenetproject.org/msg5526...
I stand by every word I said in that mailing list thread.
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A correction, based on the text as written:
they were saying they debated with themselves,
before making the decision.
> This is a false narrative, from the Freenet FAQ[1]:
I'm sorry, but nothing following that even comes close to proving that it's a false narrative. Quite the opposite actually.
To be fair, I see some goodwill, e.g.:
> To ease the transition the old freenetproject.org domain was redirected to hyphanet’s website, while the recently acquired freenet.org domain was used for the new architecture.
So in that aspect it seems more user friendly than a hard fork.
>while the old one continues to exist and is maintained under its new name "Hyphanet"
Well, that name pretty much dooms the project to a slow death in obscurity.
To play devil's advocate, wasn't it already long dead?
So he forked the project and went his own way. I am not sure I see the issue here. This is how we do open source on the internet. You don't have to join him, but he also has the right to go his own way too.
You're getting this wrong.
He has forked the project (to something that does not share the same goals so "fork" is arguable here), took the name, the cash and the goodwill.
We went from "we have enough donations/donators" to "how do we pay for the upcoming AWS bill?".
As someone who has been fairly active on the "old freenet", I have never cared about money nor funding... but I cannot help but notice that some has likely been misappropriated. Things like the SUMA award (https://web.archive.org/web/20150320201527/http://suma-award...) were awarded specifically for "protection against surveillance and censorship" that the "new freenet" does not even aim to provide.
"The board" of the non-profit seems to have been culled just before the decision. I don't know why, I wasn't on it. Maybe @agl can shime in (he was).
All I know is that this could have been handled better. It's what I wrote back then on https://www.mail-archive.com/devl@freenetproject.org/msg5527...
> to something that does not share the same goals so "fork" is arguable here
How do the goals differ, specifically?
> but I cannot help but notice that some has likely been misappropriated
You had no visibility into the project's finances, yet you're publicly implying financial impropriety without evidence.
I've raised substantially more funding for the new Freenet in the past 5 years than was raised during the entire prior 20-year history of the project.
> were awarded specifically for "protection against surveillance and censorship" that the "new freenet" does not even aim to provide.
In what way does a decentralized network with optional anonymity not protect against surveillance and censorship?
> "The board" of the non-profit seems to have been culled just before the decision. I don't know why, I wasn't on it. Maybe @agl can shime in (he was).
You also acknowledge here that you don't know what happened. Those board members' departures were at their request because they were no longer actively involved in the project.
> All I know is that this could have been handled better.
I'm sure you're right about that. But my experience at the time was that the disagreement was fundamentally about the outcome, not the process.
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The issue is that the original name, "Freenet", was repurposed for a different codebase.
Different codebase, same purpose.
This isn't even the first time we did a ground-up redesign/rewrite of the Freenet codebase, we did this in 2008 with the 0.7 release.
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No komrade...
Isn’t anonymity the one and only point of freenet.
Thanks so much for the heads up. I loved Freenet as a concept back in the day and used to devote a significant chunk of my tiny hard drive to trying to help out. I looked it up a few months ago and honestly thought I was experiencing some kind of memory dailure when I saw the new project under that name. Was wondering what the project I was so excited for had _actually_ been called all those years back. Now I know what happened, and where to find the project I actually liked.
anonymity was the main point of freenet... So weird
I'm very glad to hear that—the anonymity of the original Freenet has led to it being a very unsavory place that was more well known for CSAM then anything positive or useful. As an outsider, it sounds like this new direction is the right choice for Freenet to try and attract new users and fulfill the team's original goals.
Extremely depraved things are not the only thing to use freedom of speech for, and freely speaking can result in all kinds of repressions.
And even without agreeing on whether people should be anonymous on the Internet,
it could be agreed that replacing a software which guards against a certain threat model (repressions) with one which does not,
without changing the name, is not exactly a wise decision.
The new Freenet will support the creation of anonymity systems as services on top of it, which is much better architecturally than tying the platform to one approach to anonymity as I did when I designed the original Freenet.
We will also have a decentralized reputation system that will protect people from being exposed to unsavory or illegal content, a common criticism of the old Freenet architecture.
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> Extremely depraved things are not the only thing to use freedom of speech for
I’m not a fan of “think of the children“ arguments but the Internet cannot actually be a complete free for all and “freedom of speech” is not some magic shield that overrides all other ethical considerations. CSAM is not a particularly high bar and frankly if you want people to throw in with you then you can’t brush it off so lightly.
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> Extremely depraved things are not the only thing to use freedom of speech for.
And yet, it's materially all anonymity is actually for in practice, within a margin of error. Tor - mostly crime & CSAM. Crypto - mostly crime. 4chan - mostly degeneracy, some crime. Faceless Corporations - used for crime, and things that should be crimes, but hide under other names.
I wasn't very happy as a user with an interest in tech/internet history to find my old bookmarks and notes had been hijacked by the new renamed project. The Original Freenet (Hyphanet) was quite interesting. The new one, less so, especially with the name hijacking.