Hey I had some time to check up with founder of Freenet and Uprizer, Ian Clarke. Read how Ian is defending our privacy and helping P2P development.
Zeropaid – Freenet has great potential but many complain of user friendliness, will this be resolved with the release of version 0.5?
Ian – We have made great strides in user-friendliness over the past few weeks
and months, the Windows installer in-particular has improved
dramatically. One of the problems we encounter is that some people
download Freenet with the expectation that it works in the same way as
software such as Napster, Kazaa, or Morpheus, yet Freenet’s user
interface is not designed to make it easy to share mp3s, as this isn’t
our goal. Rather, people should view Freenet as an alternative to the
WWW, which is slower, but where information can be published and
consumed without fear of censorship.
Zeropaid – When can we expect version 0.5?
Ian – When its ready 
But seriously, we are releasing a new version of Freenet every day now,
and have made it very easy for people to upgrade to the latest Freenet
version (Windows users can do it from their Start menu, and there is a
simple script for Linux users). Because of this, the need for a new
major release isn’t as great as if we only made major releases available
to the public.
Zeropaid – Is Freenet the future of filesharing?
Ian – I don’t think Freenet is the future of filesharing, it isn’t as good at
some of the things that other file sharing applications do, nor is it
designed to be. At a more theoretical level, Freenet’s level of
decentralization, adaptiveness, and scalability are still unique among
deployed P2P software.
Zeropaid – What is Uprizer?
Ian – Uprizer is a for-profit corporation I co-founded to explore commercial
applications for some of the ideas behind the Freenet architecture.
More information is available from http://www.uprizer.com/.
Zeropaid – The development of Uprizer seems more “corporate” than the Freenet project, if intentional why the change?
Ian – Well, being a corporation, it is unsurprising that Uprizer is more
“corporate” 
Uprizer is a separate project to Freenet, the only
links between the projects are that I am involved in both, and both
projects use some of the ideas in my 1999 thesis “A Distributed
Decentralized Information Storage and Retrieval System”. Freenet’s goal
is to ensure freedom of communication on the Internet, Uprizer’s goal is
to pay my (and the other shareholder’s) rent. Ideologically speaking,
the two projects are orthogonal.
Zeropaid – Will the Uprizer have any effects of Freenet development?
Ian – My hope is that both projects will indirectly benefit each-other, but
there are no formal ties between them.
Zeropaid – Other than Freenet what is your community of choice?
Ian – I have been hanging out on Slashdot since the early days, although I am
finding it less interesting than I used to. I occasionally post a story
to Kuro5hin.org too (often under a pseudonym), although the K5 crowd can
be very quick to criticize, which often leads to bland navel-gazing
stories that are beyond any intelligent criticism other than that they
say nothing interesting whatsoever. I have some friends who are into
LiveJournal, but have never felt the personal need to share the boring
details of my life with the rest of the Internet.
Zeropaid – What about kiddie porn, offensive content or terrorism on Freenet?
Ian – If you want the right to speak freely, then you must grant that right to
others, irrespective of how much you disagree with what they are saying.
Zeropaid – What is your take on other “secure” networks such as FileTopia, how
do they compare to Freenet?
Ian – I am unfamiliar with FileTopia, but more generally, I have been
surprised that even after two years, Freenet is still largely unique
in-terms of its goals and how it achieves them.
Zeropaid – Do you have anything to say to Zeropaid users?
Ian – Not beyond what I have already said.
Check out Freenet Project here.
Related Posts
- Ian Clarke Interviewed
- Zeropaid Interview: Chris and Jorge of Zeropaid
- Zeropaid Interview: Pablo from Blubster
- Call for support: Paypal shuts down Freenets accounts for political reasons
- Zeropaid Interview: John Marshall, creator/programmer of Gnucleus
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