2005-08-02 - icepick

I've started work on Mnet over I2P. I post updates when finish something on the #Mnet Chump

2005-03-08 - Zooko

good-bye, Mnet, and good luck. I'm going commercial! plus my last design doc

2004-09-22 - Zooko

The status page has been updated to show current release, network, and development status. The current Mnet network is usable, but just barely, because there are just barely enough servers connected. If you want to contribute to Mnet, please run a server! See the status page for details.

2004-05-15 - Zooko

There is a new w32 binary package up! See the download page.

We've moved from sf.net to our own domain, https://mnetproject.org/. Thanks to sourceforge for providing us with free hosting all those years. Thanks to Myers Carpenter for registering our new domain name and doing all the cool custom system administration.

2004-04-25 - Zooko

Okay, Mnet still uses up more RAM than it should sometimes. Up to 180 MB of RAM, which is more than it should. But I don't think it ever goes above that level, and it rarely goes up that high at all. So I've marked it as a known bug in v0.6.2. Now there are no open bugs scheduled to be fixed before v0.6.2. See for the current status. We'll do some testing of the current version (nano 383), and then if no more critical bugs turn up we'll send out a release announcement about it.

2004-03-17 - Zooko

The Bermuda Triangle Bug was fixed several weeks ago, but now we have found a bug, or a set of bugs, that cause Mnet to use up too much RAM (more than 100 MB of RAM in some cases). We have good leads on those bugs, and I expect to close them out in a few days. As always, see for the current status. You can also read to learn about the history of bugs, and you for more general discussion of Mnet's state and future directions.

2004-02-09 - Zooko

Arno and I have found time to work on debugging Mnet. We haven't fixed the Bermuda Triangle Bug yet, but we're making progress. Monitor our progress or contribute bug reports at .

2003-12-13 - Zooko

I just looked at my calendar and agenda and realized that there is no way I'm going to spend time on Mnet until mid-January. Therefore, let's plan for a final release of v0.6.2 at the end of January. The current version, v0.6.2.331-STABLE, works fine, and there is a stable network of nodes in operation which give rise to a persistent filesystem. The outstanding bugs (see for details) are performance issues which may or may not even be noticeable to the user, but we want to fix them or at least understand the behavior that we've observed before releasing v0.6.2 final.

2003-12-11 - Zooko

Okay, there have been significant bugs found in v0.6.2, so the final release is not imminent. v0.6.2 still works -- you can publish, search, and download -- but there are at least potentially performance problems caused by these bugs. You can always check for the current status. Set the "Group" option to "v0.6.2" to see bugs against the current v0.6.2.

2003-12-08 - Zooko

There are no more known bugs against v0.6.2 in the issue tracker. Binary tarballs are available for download via the download page.

Try it out! Please run a long-lived, stable server. If no new bugs turn up, we will send out a widespread Release Announcement one week from today, on 2003-12-15.

2003-10-27 - Artimage

new weekly news report

The Mnet Weekly News for October 27th is now available.

2003-10-25

NOTICE: A Backwards Incompatible Upgrade is Happening

For the first time in as far back as I can remember, Mnet is undergoing a backwards-incompatible upgrade, where the new version doesn't necessarily work with the old version and vice versa. This will also hopefully be the last time for as far forward as I can predict. Anyway, if you want to connect to the new Mnet network, you need v0.6.2.239-STABLE or newer, or v0.7.0.68-UNSTABLE or newer. Unfortunately as of this writing, there aren't packages built yet, so you have to be able to compile Mnet from source on your machine to run it.

2003-08-14

Help Mnet

There are currently too few reliable servers on Mnet for it to function properly. You can help! If you run a server you will help Mnet function better. Which servers you should run depends on how long you keep your node running for. Read more about it on the help-Mnet page, or just start the servers that suit you.

2003-10-06 - Artimage

new weekly news report

The Mnet Weekly News for October 6th is now available.

2003-09-28 - Artimage

new weekly news report

The Mnet Weekly News for September 28th is now available.

Notice: Mnet Is Not (Yet) Anonymous

Note: Mnet is not anonymous! Any other user of the Mnet network can see your IP address, and with a little deduction can probably figure out what files you are uploading and downloading. (Future versions of Mnet will add more anonymity features, perhaps by using other anonymizing systems such as the new MixMinion project. Regardless of how strong Mnet's anonymity protection becomes, we will always be careful to tell about its limits so that the user can make an informed decision about their own risks.)

There is already some limited protection: Mnet encrypts both the file contents and the communications between nodes, so for an attacker to learn what an Mnet user is doing he must do some combination of traffic analysis and running an Mnet node himself.

2003-04-15 - Artimage

new weekly news report

The Mnet Weekly News for April 15th is now available.

2003-03-31 - Artimage

new weekly news report

The Mnet Weekly News for March 31st is now available.

bug fixed in version 205: privacy leak

When you publish a file using the HTML UI, you can choose a category to put it in or you can choose "NO TRACKER". If you choose "NO TRACKER", then Mnet is supposed to publish the file while keeping the encryption keys secret. That way nobody in the world can see the contents of the file other than people with whom you choose to share your encryption keys. In v0.6.1 versions up to and including v0.6.1.204-STABLE, Mnet doesn't keep the keys private but instead sends a copy of your encryption keys to several Content Trackers. This bug is fixed in v0.6.1.205-STABLE and new packages for all platforms will be uploaded soon.

2003-03-10 - Artimage

new weekly news report

The Mnet Weekly News for March 10th is now available.

2003-03-02 - zooko

Mnet v0.6.1 has been released.

, , download

2003-02-23 - Artimage

new weekly news report

The Mnet Weekly News for Feb 23 is now available.

2003-01-14 - zooko

FAQ

I just posted the first version of the Mnet FAQ.

2003-01-14 - zooko

Mnet v0.6 has been released.

, , download

2002-12-17 - icepick

new weekly news report

The Mnet Weekly News for Dec 17 is now available.

2002-12-12 - zooko

Mnet Is Not Anonymous

Note: Mnet is not anonymous! Any other user of the Mnet network can see your IP address, and with a little deduction can probably figure out what files you are uploading and downloading. Currently there are only 15 to 21 people using Mnet, according to .

(Future versions of Mnet may add more anonymity features. Regardless of how strong Mnet's anonymity protection becomes, we will always go out of our way to let the user know its limits so that they user doesn't believe that it is stronger than it is.)

2002-12-11 - zooko

Weekly News Report

The Mnet Weekly News for Dec 8 is now available.

2002-11-16 - zooko

Weekly News Report

The Mnet Weekly News for Nov 24 is now available.

2002-11-17 - myers

Weekly News Report

Zooko wrote weekly status reports for Nov 10 and Nov 17.

2002-11-06 - zooko

Mnet weekly news available

I've started posting a weekly report on Mnet's progress to the mnet-devel mailing list. Links to the reports are now available on the status page.

2002-09-15 - myers

Mnet v0.5.1 has been released.

0.5.1 is finally out. zooko sent out a . You can find prebuilt binaries via our download page. Please help us out and .

2002-07-26 - zooko

release candidate available for testing

There is a release candidate for v0.5.1-STABLE available from the download page. Please try it out and submit ! After we fix any bugs discovered and write a ChangeLog and a release announcement, we will release v0.5.1-STABLE. Known bugs include that download sometimes pauses for 15 minutes or more.

2002-07-24 - zooko

new introductory docs

Wondering how the Mnet network works? Start by reading on the new documentation page, which provides a short and simple introductory overview of the Mnet architecture.

2002-07-18 - zooko

HiveCache and patents

There is an article on slashdot about Mnet's ancestor, Mojo Nation, and its cousin, HiveCache. I haven't mentioned HiveCache on this web site yet because it is a commercial product and I didn't want to preempt their publicity. However since it is slashdotted, and since the HiveCache web site mentions pending patents, people have started asking about patents and Mnet. (Note: I have no commercial relationship with the HiveCache company.)

I haven't seen the text of the patent application, and when I do, I can write more specific comments, but I can make three statements which are generally true regardless of the text of the patent application:

1. Patents apply to ideas, not to source code. This means that a patent owner could force us to stop using a specific idea in Mnet, but they cannot force us to stop using the source code of Mnet. It also means that if you were to implement your own application, writing every single line of source code yourself, then your project would be just as vulnerable to patent litigation as Mnet is, if it used an idea that was claimed in a patent.

2. You cannot patent ideas that were already publically known before you filed the patent. Mnet uses a whole lot of ideas like this, such as erasure coding, encryption, cryptographic hashes as identifiers, proxying to bypass firewalls, search engines to find metadata, and many more. Even if litigation were to force us to remove a few of the most novel ideas in Mnet, there would be plenty of powerful ideas left on which to build a universal emergent filesystem.

3. Every software application that is running on your computer, and every open source project that is listed on SourceForge, is potentially covered under some patent or other. There are over 30,000 new patents on software granted each year (that's a new software patent every 17 minutes!), and many of them are overly broad or make claims on previously known and/or obvious ideas. The mere fact that there exists a patent (or a pending patent application) that makes claims on an idea in a particular piece of software is pretty much meaningless, since it is always true for all software. This is not to say that I believe HiveCache's patent to be invalid -- I haven't seen it so I can't say. Indeed, I hope that HiveCache is applying for patents on innovative applications of emergent filesystem technology, and that they make a bundle of money commercializing those applications.

In sum, I hope that my fellow open source hackers will continue to contribute to the Mnet project and other similar projects, with confidence that their contributions will be to the benefit of the public. As more news develops, we'll post about it here.

If you don't care about patent issues and were just looking for the latest Mnet release, it's coming soon! You can help by downloading and testing it.

2002-03-22 - zooko

There is now a related projects page which describes the components of Mnet and its relation to other open source projects, with links.

2002-03-15 - zooko

There is now a status page which shows the current version, known bugs, and which Mnet subprojects people are actively working on.

2002-02-17 - myers

After more testing, the win32 build has quite a bad segfault bug, having to do with closing search tabs.

The bug is in wxPython and I need to work with them to fix it. So for now don't expect too much from the release.

You have been warned!

2002-02-15 - myers

Through blood sweat and tears, we now have a win32 package for . Tested on WinNT, Win2k, WinXP.

Enjoy!

2002-02-12 - zooko

The first public release of Mnet will be demonstrated at CodeCon this Friday, February 15.

The code is available via CVS ()

If you will be in the San Francisco, then consider visiting CodeCon, which will feature many new and exciting projects (all of which are required to have working code in order to present at CodeCon) and relatively cheap tickets at $65.00 for three days.