[cess11]

"Anonymity: While the previous version was designed with a focus on anonymity, the current version does not offer built-in anonymity but allows for a choice of anonymizing systems to be layered on top."

https://freenet.org/about/faq/

[sanity]

How is offering the user more choice with respect to anonymity changing the goals of the project?

[KaiserPro]

the _point_ of freenet was that you could anonymously share/store information. For better or worse, that was the point of it. It also drove the UX and tradeoffs for the network.

It was slower than Kazaa/bittorrent, but it was far harder to work out who was shareing what. (if memory serves it also chunked files up so they weren;t on the same machine, but that could be me misremembering)

[sanity]

> the _point_ of freenet was that you could anonymously share/store information.

As you can with the new Freenet, you just get a menu of options instead of being forced to use a one-size-fits-all approach to anonymity.

[ArneBab]

yes, it chunks files, and aggregates multiple chunks per packet, and pads packets it sends around, so size analysis by the ISP cannot trace the path.

[cess11]

I kind of see "focus" in the FAQ and "goals" in this thread as interchangeable.

It would surprise me if this would not be a common interpretation of these texts alone among the readers here.

As for the general reputation of the OG Freenet in this lineage, to the extent I'm aware, anonymity was pretty much the defining characteristic. More or less everything else in the user experience suffered to some extent compared to other chat and file sharing services because of this "focus".

[sanity]

If we're doing archaeology, my original 1999 paper was called "A Distributed Decentralized Information Storage and Retrieval System".

[cess11]

Fine. Page 6, which is Chapter 2, under the heading Aims, there is a numbered list. What is the second item in this list?

[sanity]

If you have a point to make you should make it.

[cess11]

I'll quote it then:

   2. It should provide anonymity to b oth providers and consumers of informa-
      tion