News
29th Jan, 2008 - Freenet 0.7.0a2 alphatest released
Freenet version 0.7a2 is now available for public testing.
Freenet is a global peer-to-peer network designed to allow users to publish and consume information without fear of censorship. To use it, you must download the Freenet software, available for Windows, Mac, Linux and other operating systems. Your computer will then form part of a global, decentralized P2P network, and you will be able to publish and consume information anonymously, either through your web browser, or through a variety of third party applications, such as Frost (see http://jtcfrost.sf.net/).
Since the first alpha there have been vast numbers of changes, in particular significant improvements in user friendliness. For example, it is no-longer necessary to find other people to connect to, Freenet can find other people for you. However, you can still connect to your friends for maximum security. It is also a good deal faster, and many bugs have been fixed.
There have been many many other changes, and we will release a feature complete beta followed by 0.7.0 itself in the coming months (we hope to have regular point releases after that). But we thought it would be best to get some wider testing at this point. There is more to do before 0.7.0, and one or two features which need to be completed before that.
Freenet 0.7a2 can be downloaded from here.
This release would not have been possible without the release of numerous volunteers, and Matthew Toseland, Freenet's full time developer. Matthew's work is funded through donations via our website (as well as a few larger sponsors from time to time), we ask that anyone who can help us to ensure Matthew's continued employment by visiting our donations page and making a contribution at the donation page.
15th May, 2007 - John Pozadzides donates $10,000 to Freenet Project
John Pozadzides, founder of HTMLHelp.com and former Vice President of Sales for SAVVIS Communications, has donated $10,000 to the Freenet Project to fund ongoing development of the Freenet software. John says:
More than a decade ago when I founded HTMLHelp.com I had a vision of the Internet as the “great equalizer”. I believed that it would free us from the content filtering imposed by mega-media companies and governments. It turns out this has been true for most of us - but not all.
I view supporting the Freenet Project as a logical extension of that original dream, this time to include people who were previously unable to freely participate.
This donation will be used to fund general development, and in particular, improvements to software usability and stability. A specific goal is the completion of Freenet's "opennet" functionality which will make it far easier for many users to get Freenet up and running.
Anyone is free to make their own donation to the project, via a variety of convenient methods including Paypal and Google Checkout through our donations page.
You can read John's blog entry announcing this donation here.12 March, 2007 - Google Summer of Code update
We have selected 6 students to work for us over the summer, paid for by Google Summer of Code.
These are:
- Swati Goyal will be working on improving searching in Freenet.
- Frédéric Rechtenstein will be building us a blogging plugin.
- Alberto Bacchelli will be building a test framework and many unit tests.
- Vilhelm Verendel will be working on simulating the growth of the network.
- Srivatsan will be working on improving Freenet's connection encryption and possibly on darknet introductions.
- Mladen Kolar will be building a definitive C/C++ library for the Freenet Client Protocol.
Congratulations to all of these students. Last year's Summer of Code yielded results including Thaw, Freemail, new low-level simulations and a great deal of work on the installer, packaging and general bugfixing. Even better, two of last year's students are now core developers themselves mentoring Summer of Code students this year !