[freenet-chat] ANN: freedisk (freenet filesystem) pre-alpha

[David McNab]

David McNab wrote:
> Conrad J. Sabatier wrote:
>> Not intended in any way to detract from your work, but what is the
>> intended purpose or use for this?
> 
> Not intended in any way to detract from your question, but does it matter?

Well, for a more constructive answer - what I'm hoping is to work
towards a 'virtual disk in freenet' kind of idea.

The longer range aim is where a user can create a SSK keypair, and store
this encrypted on their PC. Upon entry of a passphrase, the filesystem
would hold the decrypted keypair in memory, and use it (as USK@ keys) to
implement a hierarchy of files/directories totally within freenet.

In concept, it would work a little bit like PGPdisk, but with all
content distributed throughout the freenet. The user would be able to
use their familiar applications (eg OpenOffice) and save documents
within their freenetfs directory. For instance, saving a document to
/mnt/freenet/mydir/documents/protest-plan.doc, would result in such
'file' being inserted into freenet as a CHK@, then added to the manifest
for their private USK@ key, then the manifest reinserted upon sync.
OpenOffice would be none the wiser.

In addition, the user would be at liberty to disclose his public key to
others, to give others the ability to 'mount' the directory readonly.
Also, maybe give some trusted others the private key to allow them to
mount the directory read/write.

It's early days yet. I'm still sorting through options for how to do
these 'directory mounts' *within* the freenetfs.

Cheers
David