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Syndie - distributed forums

# Frequently Asked Questions

- Why does Syndie matter?
- Who will host Syndie archives?
- What license is Syndie released under
- What is the relationship between Syndie and $x?

Why does Syndie matter? (up)

What do forum/blogging tools have to do with providing strong anonymity?

The answer: *everything*.

To briefly summarize:

- Syndie's design as an anonymity-sensitive client application carefully avoids the intricate data sensitivity problems that nearly every application not built with anonymity in mind does not.
- By operating on the content layer, Syndie does not depend upon the performance or reliability of distributed networks like I2P, Tor, or Freenet, though it can exploit them where appropriate.
- By doing so, it can operate fully with small, ad-hoc mechanisms for content distribution - mechanisms which may not be worth the effort for powerful adversaries to counteract (since the 'payoff' of busting just a few dozen people will likely exceed the cost of mounting the attacks)
- This implies that Syndie will be useful even without a few million people using it - small unrelated groups of people should set up their own private Syndie distribution scheme without requiring any interaction with or even awareness by any other groups.
- Since Syndie does not rely upon real-time interaction, it can even make use of high latency anonymity systems and techniques to avoid the attacks that all low latency systems are vulnerable to (such as passive intersection attacks, passive and active timing attacks, and active blending attacks).

Alternately, you can review some of Syndie's use cases.

Who will host Syndie archives? (up)

(irc log edited for clarity)

- <bar> a question i've been pondering is, who is later going to have balls big enough to host syndie production servers/archives?
- <bar> aren't those going to be as easy to track down as the eepsites are today?
- <jrandom> public syndie archives do not have the ability to *read* the content posted to forums, unless the forums publish the keys to do so
- <jrandom> and see the second paragraph of usecases.html
- <jrandom> of course, those hosting archives given lawful orders to drop a forum will probably do so
- <jrandom> (but then people can move to another archive, without disrupting the forum's operation)
- <void> yeah, you should mention the fact that migration to a different medium is going to be seamless
- <bar> if my archive shuts down, i can upload my whole forum to a new one, right?
- <jrandom> 'zactly bar
- <void> they can use two methods at the same time while migrating
- <void> and anyone is able to synchronize the mediums
- <jrandom> right void

What license is Syndie released under? (up)

Short answer: its probably simplest to consider Syndie to be released under a BSD-like license.

Medium answer: nearly all of the code is released into the public domain, with some files under MIT or BSD licenses. Syndie is also linked against a library released under the GPL with the linking exception (which means Syndie does not have to be GPLed)

Long answer: read the LICENSE file in the package.

What is the relationship between Syndie and $x? (up)

The relationship between Syndie and other efforts have been moved to their own page.