Freenet / Hyphanet 0.7.5 build 1498 is now available.
Install Freenet / Hyphanet for Windows, for GNU/Linux, macOS and other *nixes, or for Android. See the download page for more information and other platforms (Apple Silicon needs library updates to work).
This release resolves the last blocker for Freenet / Hyphanet 0.8 by providing an official Debian package. Additionally it optimizes the networking and data transfer core and provides many improvements for website authors and user experience.
There are five larger areas of improvements:
- provide a debian package
- optimize the networking and data transfer core
- more possibilities for website authors
- improve the user experience
- validated Windows installer signing workflow
Debian Package: Hyphanet as backend service
Hyphanet as privacy core.
Starting with this release, Freenet / Hyphanet has an official Debian package built automatically via github actions. This was the most important high-impact-task and the last release blocker of version 0.8 in our Roadmap. Big thanks to DC*!
With this finally realized, the next step is to get in contact with
the many privacy focussed distributions which build on Debian to make
hyphanet-fred available where it is most important. Once this is
done, tools which build on Hyphanet — like FMS, but also jSite and
tools from pyFreenet — can be packaged to work out of the box, using
Hyphanet as an ordinary background service. That’s a step towards
Hyphanet as decentralized, privacy-preserving communication backend for
other applications.
Distributions for which there already are packages include Gentoo (official: the pioneer), Arch (inofficial), and Guix (inofficial).
Another step towards this is accepting the Schema hypha[net] to simplify writing browser extensions that forward hypha:-links to Hyphanet.
Optimized networking and data transfer
Optimized Hyphanet core.
The networking layer was optimized significantly. Searching packet types is often stopped early and common or cheaper checks are done before less common or time-consuming checks. This gives significant reductions of CPU load, especially for very fast nodes.
Juiceman fixed a bug that limited MTU to 1280 where not needed.
And recently failed and data not found cooldown times were reduced to 5 minutes and 3 minutes, reducing one of the big annoyances when accessing a site quickly after upload.
On the data transfer layer healing was optimized. After 1495 strongly increased the amount of healing to keep large files available for longer, 1498 specializes healing to keys close to the node location. This reduces healing per file, but improves privacy, because healing inserts are then more similar to forwarding — they mostly send data close to the nodes location — and it reduces the network load of healing, because the specialized healing inserts need fewer hops to reach the optimal storage location in the network.
Possibilities for website authors
Optimized core features.
For website authors, more CSS elements, selectors and combinators
(:checked, word-wrap: anywhere, focus-within, ^=, $=, *=,
>, +, ~) and additional HTML elements (summary, details,
<meta name="Viewport"...>) are available. This strongly expands the
possibilities of websites in Hyphanet, because Javascript or
webassembly are no viable options in an environment where a privacy
breach could put people at risk. We’ve seen with Java applets, that
untrusted code will always break out of its containment. The CSS
improvements in contrast provide a safe way to enable limited
interactivity.
Streaming support via m3u lists was improved to allow accessing segments of up to 200MiB.
And using -1 as version in a USK now properly finds version 0, if
this is the only existing version.
User experience improvements
Far from the core, but essential for usage.
In addition to these changes deep down, there are a number of directly visible improvements.
The plugins KeepAlive and Sharesite are updated (the latter now uses the new Night Zen Garden style). The UPnP2 plugin is now visible in simple mode. It can replace UPnP and should work better. On the flipside the Library plugin is moved to advanced plugins, because it does not work reliably enough.
The plugin list is easier to navigate by removing the defunct option to download plugins from the clearnet and by adding better styling. Downloading from the clearnet was an unnecessary privacy risk since we’ve been bundling essential plugins with the installer for a few years now.
The noderef for friend-to-friend connections is shown in simple mode again, because it is robust enough with the changes in recent years. This should remove a barrier to adding direct connections and enabling fully confidential messages between friends.
There are new configuration options to allow connecting via local services. That’s a step towards making it easy to add a second layer of security, for example confining connections to a local network. Thanks goes to s7r for these changes!
When bandwidth detection fails, the upload bandwidth now defaults to 160KiB/s. Also the NLM config is now disabled statically. This was a testing setup which could still be active in old nodes, but it would break connectivity nowadays.
The default bookmarks include the Opennet SeedNodes statistics, the generate media site to create decentralized streaming sites, and the high-impact-tasks. The bookmarks are also re-ordered to be a better match for newcomers. Starting category: first steps, clean spider, Index of Indexes. Software category ordered by ease of use from fproxy.
There were a number of Java 21 fixes, including all our tests (thanks to Bombe!), and improvement to the github actions (thanks to AHOHNMYC).
In addition there was a lot of polish. Bert Massop (welcome back!) and Veniamin Fernandes replaced our homegrown CurrentTimeUTC with modern Java options. Alex fixed the pronoun used in strings. Bombe added getters for all direct field access in the node. Hiina reduced logging level of store warnings so no unneeded backtraces are created for node with large stores and Juiceman updated code to use more modern structures.
Time-dependence of compressor selection was removed. This caused non-determinism for inserts and could cause keys to be non-reproducible on systems with faster or slower network.
Validated Windows installer signing workflow
Recovered core safety on Windows.
And finally the new exe signing workflow we built to fulfill the requirements of SignPath, our new windows installer signing provider for the upcoming releases, runs the verify-build script on every release to ensure that the jar we release has actually been built from the sources. This provides a second safety net, in addition to anonymous users running the script and posting the results (thanks to all who did this — please keep it up, otherwise people have to fully trust github). The release is not yet byte-by-byte reproducible, because the jar MANIFEST defines among other info the exact java version used to compile it, and the java version available differs by distribution and time, so it would get harder over time to verify the build. Instead its verification ensures that there are no functional changes by comparing the content of the decompressed jar with a clean build from the sources.
A special thanks goes to Bombe for many careful reviews!
Contribute
Join our core.
If you want to help us get better, please chat with us in #freenet @ irc.libera.chat. And give us time to answer, we’re all volunteers and might not be in your timezone.
To get into development right-away, have a look at one of the Freenet / Hyphanet Projects or just get fred and fix something that annoys you.
And to take on something that makes a big difference, have a look at the high-impact tasks.
In addition to coding, spreading Hyphanet, joining the community, writing a decentralized website, and other ways to contribute within Hyphanet, you can join the awesome team of translators at transifex. They are the reason why we’re able to support several different languages, the often unseen heroes who make our work accessible to those who need it the most.
What is Freenet / Hyphanet?
Hyphanet is the original Freenet,
a peer-to-peer platform for
censorship-resistant and privacy-respecting
publishing and communication.
I worry about my child and the Internet all the time, even though she's too young to have logged on yet. Here's what I worry about. I worry that 10 or 15 years from now, she will come to me and say 'Daddy, where were you when they took freedom of the press away from the Internet? --Mike Godwin, Electronic Frontier Foundation
What about the name „Hyphanet“? See Freenet renamed to Hyphanet.
That Hyphanet can keep moving forward and help people worldwide to exercise their basic rights and freedoms is the work of amazing volunteers, both contributors and people running Hyphanet nodes.
Thank you for your contributions, and thank you for using Freenet / Hyphanet!
-- AB
Install Freenet / Hyphanet for Windows, for GNU/Linux, macOS and other *nixes, or for Android. See the download page for more information and other platforms.