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Re: [GNUnet-developers] Freenet 0.5


From: Tracy R Reed
Subject: Re: [GNUnet-developers] Freenet 0.5
Date: Fri, 1 Nov 2002 15:44:17 -0800
User-agent: Mutt/1.2.5i

On Fri, Nov 01, 2002 at 11:51:31PM +0200, Igor Wronsky spake thusly:
> That is apparently a troll, but someone has to fall for it, 
> hooks and all.  ;)

Actually, it wasn't a troll but a serious question. Freenet has been
plagued with release issues, changing code without changing version
numbers, all manner of java related problems (a problem gnunetd has
obviously learned to avoid since it is written in C) such as thread
madness and runaway cpu useage, general complication which is a serious
ease of use issue, it is designed so as to preclude any sort of search
(another thing which gnunetd has avoided), they arranged a whole bunch of
publicity and then got the network slashdotted (hard to tell if that is a
good thing or bad thing in the long run), and I could probably thing of
quite a bit more if I sat here a while.

> But if you (or someone else) can give a brief overview, I'm sure 
> we'd all be glad to hear.

Well, above is a basic overview of the things I have noticed. 

> a) Design first.

Freenet had some manner of conceptual design in the beginning but it has
really been played by ear since then.

> b) Pay for expert(s) to work on the project full-time.

Freenet has definitely benefitted from this one. Their datastore was a
horrendous mess which crashed often and caused the network to lose lots of
data which made it very difficult to find anything. And only one person
understood the datastore and was then unable to iron out the bugs.  Then
they took on a full time employee to rewrite a whole new datastore and now
the situation is greatly improved.

> c) Use dictatorial development model - have a person or
> two who adequately know each and every part of the project.
> It will help if those persons have knowledge of related 
> research fields to know directions where most gain can be
> achieved by developing or adapting existing algorithms 
> from the literature (routing, data-structures, etc) 

Freenet has this to some degree. Ian definitely seems to be in charge of
things with Oskar a strong lead also.

> d) Don't reinvent wheels.

A la the freenet datastore. 

> Maybe lack of some of them caused some of freenet's
> previous problems -- which hopefully are in the past now.
> GNUnet seems to have followed most of those points <grin>, 
> but realization of part b would be most useful at this point,
> and one can never know enough about ongoing and past 
> research.

Indeed. But part B takes money and until gnunet gains more of a following
that is going to be hard to come by. But the fact that it is the only
anonymous system with a search capability should make it quite attractive.

> Eventually user community will most likely help on
> the application side (with more detailed clients etc) 
> when/if project gains popularity.

Exactly.

-- 
Tracy Reed      http://www.ultraviolet.org
"Our products just aren't engineered for security." - Brian Valentine, 
senior VP in charge of Microsoft's Windows development 5 Sept 2002

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