[twentydollars]

> Why is it not possible for GNUnet to / why doesn't GNUnet offer a high-level API that could be consumed by every-day apps and that stays stable across releases?

This isn't possible because GNUnet does not work, and AFAICT has never been in a working state. They won't find the time to build an API when they can't find the time to actually produce working software.

I have been watching the project for a decade at least and I can conclusively say that GNUnet is a waste of time for everyone involved.

As an aside, remember when the state-of-the-art GUI looked like this: https://fossies.org/linux/gnunet/doc/handbook/images/gnunet-...

[summm]

The GUI was never the problem. The problem is that this thing does not have any focus. Lots of dev work is done by students, BA, MA or PhD, who disappear after their thesis is done. The others always get sidetracked to numerous unrelated side-projects and features, which are interesting and generate research papers, but do not address the main problems for the overall project.

Oh, they did find time to build APIs and bindings. But again, no focus, esoteric languages such as nim and guile. Rust had one student working, who left of course. The python port was using DBUS (!!) as an additional intermediate inter-process-communication, instead of just using the IPC they already had (which is basically bare C structs over unix pipes). Obviously, after that student left, nobody cared, and the pain to maintain two layers of indirection is just to high for anyone else to step up. Oh, and you can't automatically generate bindings, because their C interface definitions are just too littered with "elegant" macros.

Besides, what would you have that API for? There is nothing at least a bit useful. Nothing the most technically oriented person would even want to just play around.

I really like those ideas and the overall goal, and I really want to be optimistic, but in the end, you may be right. If I was a 3-letter agency, I'd love this style of privacy project btw.