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Show HN: Freenet, a peer-to-peer platform for decentralized apps

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Re: Show HN: Freenet, a peer-to-peer platform for decentralized apps

#31

Post by abno525 »

sanity wrote: post #24
qcl820DV34 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 maili…

> 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/msg5…

For anyone confused, link is cited badly and mail did not get deleted.

https://www.mail-archive.com/devl@freenetproject.org/msg5526...

Re: Show HN: Freenet, a peer-to-peer platform for decentralized apps

#32

Post by sanity »

alun wrote: post #12

Very interesting. Beyond ideological motivation, I’m curious what the long-term incentive is for someone to run a peer. For example, if Freenet were to reach scale, it could eventually need some kind of economic primitive around it. Something similar to how Filecoin handles decentralized storage, but for app state. One way to do this could be paying peers to keep app state available, serve it reliably, etc. and prove…

Our intention is that Freenet will only consume surplus resources, but we plan to build a reputation system that could have a notion of "karma" that is earned by providing resources to the network. This karma could be used to gate access to resources, for example like a VIP chat room on River.

So there are a lot of possibilities but for now users are motivated by a desire to see the network succeed, and that seems to be a sufficient motivator at our current scale.

Re: Show HN: Freenet, a peer-to-peer platform for decentralized apps

#34

Post by qcl820DV34 »

sanity wrote: post #24
qcl820DV34 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 maili…

> 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/msg5…

> Incorrect, I raised the issue with the lead maintainer over a year prior to that announcement.

The previous lead maintainer, Steve, voiced their frustration with your decision here:

https://www.mail-archive.com/devl@freenetproject.org/msg5526...

To which you sent a brash reply, which sounds like you don't know Steve's position in the community:

https://www.mail-archive.com/devl@freenetproject.org/msg5526...

To which the current lead maintainer, Arne, said he agrees with the sentiment of Steve:

https://www.mail-archive.com/devl@freenetproject.org/msg5526...

So if you discussed this with Arne for a year, then why does he agree with the frustration of Steve?

And even if the discussion with Arne happened, it still was a backroom decision:

Two people are not representative on a project with plenty of developers and an active community.

> As the project's architect I'm entitled to make decisions about the project's future direction.

A sense of entitlement is not a leadership quality.

A leadership quality would be to admit a mistake:

That repurposing the name was not only bad for the original project,

but also for the new one (because these discussions will haunt it forever),

and to then rename the new project to a fresh name which no other software used before.

Re: Show HN: Freenet, a peer-to-peer platform for decentralized apps

#35

Post by sanity »

analogpixel wrote: post #11

ELI5, how is this different than the internet?

Imagine an internet that is fundamentally decentralized, where your online presence isn't at the mercy of a company like Google, Amazon, or Microsoft.

Think of it as going back to the Internet's decentralized roots.

Re: Show HN: Freenet, a peer-to-peer platform for decentralized apps

#36

Post by sanity »

gustavus wrote: post #14

In my early days of technology tinkering when I was young I was always interested in security, and one day I stumbled upon freenet, and my world changed. It was amazing and led me to get far more acquainted with the cyberpunk scene. It was this alternative separate internet from what the rest of the world saw with all of the good and bad that brought. I've been meaning to set it up again and get back into it. I will…

Thank you!

If you're in a position to support the project financially you're more than welcome to donate[1], we're a 501c3 non-profit and all funds go to support development.

If you're a developer and are interested in building on Freenet I suggest starting with https://freenet.org/build/manual/tutorial/, you can also join our Matrix room[2], or install Freenet[3] and chat with us on River[3], our decentralized group chat.

[1] https://freenet.org/donate/

[2] https://matrix.to/#/#freenet-locutus:matrix.org

[3] https://freenet.org/quickstart/

Re: Show HN: Freenet, a peer-to-peer platform for decentralized apps

#37

Post by qcl820DV34 »

outside2344 wrote: post #27
qcl820DV34 wrote: post #16

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…

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.

The issue is that the original name, "Freenet", was repurposed for a different codebase.

Re: Show HN: Freenet, a peer-to-peer platform for decentralized apps

#38

Post by [deleted] »

sanity wrote: post #20
qcl820DV34 wrote: post #16

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…

> 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…

[deleted]

Re: Show HN: Freenet, a peer-to-peer platform for decentralized apps

#39

Post by aleqs »

sanity wrote: post #28
aleqs wrote: post #5

Very cool project! > We've developed a unique (AFAIK) solution to the consistency problem, every contract must define a "merge" operation for the contract's associated state. This operation must be commutative, meaning that you can merge multiple states in any order and you'll get the same end result. Where can I learn more about this? How is this different from CRDTs/CmRDTs?

> Very cool project! Thank you! > Where can I learn more about this? If you don't mind watching a video I gave this talk back in March that should be fairly comprehensive: https://youtu.be/3SxNBz1VTE0?si=R4ifrsfEUJfvjDPx If you would prefer an article I recommend: https://freenet.org/about/news/summary-delta-sync/ > How is this different from CRDTs/CmRDTs? It's very closely related, you can view Freenet contract stat…

Thanks!

Re: Show HN: Freenet, a peer-to-peer platform for decentralized apps

#40

Post by mweidner »

For values that don't have a natural merge function (or where you don't want to bother writing one), would it make sense to sync update logs instead? That is:

- The synced value is a history of client updates, sorted in some eventually consistent order (e.g. by hybrid logical clocks). Merging takes the union of the update sets.

- The user-visible value is the result of processing these updates in order, using arbitrary contract code.

This is overkill for simple last-writer-wins values, but it lets you support fairly general data types & arbitrary update functions, including ones that preserve application-specific invariants.

The Automerge CRDT library works like this already [1][2], but it only allows specific updates to JSON data. Sharing code via your contracts solves the hard part of generalizing that to arbitrary data & updates.

[1] https://automerge.org/

[2] https://arxiv.org/abs/1805.04263

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