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Freenet

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Current Version: 0.7.5 (June 12, 2009)

Freenet is free software that lets you anonymously share files, browse and publish "freesites" (web sites accessible only through Freenet) and chat on forums, without fear of censorship. Freenet is decentralised to make it less vulnerable to attack, and if used in "darknet" mode, where users only connect to their friends, is very difficult to detect.

Version 0.7.5 adds/changes the following:

  • Freenet now uses a database to store longer-term data that must survive a restart. This increases Freenet's speed and reduces its memory usage. In particular, you can now have almost any number of downloads and uploads in progress without worrying about memory usage.
  • Improvements to the web interface make it clearer what you can do with Freenet, show progress when loading a page or file will take more than a few seconds, integrate search into the browse page, and generally improve usability in many areas.
  • Significantly improved performance for inserting and retrieving files and especially pages, and also for Freenet's initial connection to the network.
  • A new installer for Windows which works with Vista as well as Windows XP/2000 (Freenet also works on Mac and Linux systems).
  • Many other optimizations.
  • Lots and lots of bug fixes!

User Reviews

"Freenet is a brilliant idea designed explicitly for free speech. It's still very young, but if you're a developer interested in the best ideas in peer-to-peer, check it out. Also if you're a content developer, I'd suggest contributing to the network."
—Nym Ano

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Also See . . .

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Also Consider . . .

These are applications that are newer and of potential interest, but which I haven't yet selected for permanent inclusion. Have a look, and let me know if you think they deserve to be part of the permanent collection!