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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

#41

Post by sanity »

qcl820DV34 wrote: post #34
sanity wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 whic…

As the FAQ explains, the existing maintainers didn't agree with my decision, but I stand by it - particularly in light of the fact that we now have a working decentralized group chat on the new Freenet, something that the old architecture could never have supported.

Whether or not it was the right decision will be determined by the outcomes, which so far are promising, because we have a working network that does things that the old architecture could never do.

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

#42

Post by NamlchakKhandro »

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.

No komrade...

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

#43

Post by sanity »

mweidner wrote: post #40

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 arbitra…

> 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?

Yes, in fact you can implement this within the current framework, for example with our group chat River, each room state maintains a list of the N most recent messages sorted by (approximate) timestamp.

The idea is that you can adapt the merge logic to the needs of the specific application, and I think a time ordered event log will be a common pattern.

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

#44

Post by alun »

sanity wrote: post #32
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…

Seems reasonable to build a cryptocurrency around this. The network could pay the cryptocurrency out to users dedicating resources. Have you thought about that?

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

#45

Post by sanity »

endofreach wrote: post #15

Very interesting. I have been working on something quite some time, where something like this would play a very crucial role, but i never got around to really thinking about how to implement everything. And as I have still a lot of work to do on my project, that would utilize something like freenet, i am very eager to dive into your work. Just wanted to write this as some form as appreciation for your work. I wonder…

Thank you!

> I wonder though, what is your idea of a future, where freenet plays an important role in most peoples lives?

While I realize this is wildly ambitious, my goal is that Freenet could ultimately replace the world wide web and the client-server architecture more generally which I view as inherently concentrating power in the hands of a few (which it has done).

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

#46

Post by sanity »

qcl820DV34 wrote: post #37
outside2344 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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

#47

Post by nine_k »

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…

Why would you want to exchange private messages with anonymous counterparties?

- You participate in a secret cabal, and don't want participants' identities be visible to each other.

- You're a journalist, and want to give your informants in sensitive matters, or from oppressed countries, a way to securely interact with you, so that you won't be technically capable of reporting their identities.

- You're selling illegal goods or services.

I'd say that in the first two cases I would consider running a separate copy of the network, because it apparently involves one supernode, and I might want to control the supernode (or maybe not).

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

#48

Post by qcl820DV34 »

sanity wrote: post #46
qcl820DV34 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Repeating a bad decision does not make it any wiser.

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

#49

Post by sanity »

alun wrote: post #44
sanity wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Seems reasonable to build a cryptocurrency around this. The network could pay the cryptocurrency out to users dedicating resources. Have you thought about that?

You'd still need to solve the double-spend problem, because while contract state on Freenet will usually synchronize within a few seconds, it isn't guaranteed to converge to a single globally consistent state.

Freenet's approach works well for things like group chat, where temporary inconsistency is mostly just an irritation, but for a cryptocurrency it is fatal.

I'm not saying you couldn't build a cryptocurrency on Freenet, but you'd still need a solution to that problem.

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

#50

Post by dharmatech »

I definitely think we should be exploring decentralized approaches to services we use.

I also would like to see an emphasis on local-first approaches.

This experiment, in the spirit of UNIX, composes git and text files to form a social network:

https://github.com/dharmatech/9social

Video demo: https://youtu.be/q6qVnlCjcAI

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