Syndie is an
open-source
Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized sof ...
cross-platform
In computing, cross-platform software (also called multi-platform software, platform-agnostic software, or platform-independent software) is computer software that is designed to work in several computing platforms. Some cross-platform software ...
computer
application to
syndicate
A syndicate is a self-organizing group of individuals, companies, corporations or entities formed to transact some specific business, to pursue or promote a shared interest.
Etymology
The word ''syndicate'' comes from the French word ''syndica ...
(re-publish)
data
In the pursuit of knowledge, data (; ) is a collection of discrete values that convey information, describing quantity, quality, fact, statistics, other basic units of meaning, or simply sequences of symbols that may be further interpret ...
(mainly
forums) over a variety of
anonymous and non-anonymous
computer network
A computer network is a set of computers sharing resources located on or provided by network nodes. The computers use common communication protocols over digital interconnections to communicate with each other. These interconnections ar ...
s.
Syndie is capable of reaching archives situated in the following anonymous networks:
I2P,
Tor,
Freenet
Freenet is a peer-to-peer platform for censorship-resistant, anonymous communication. It uses a decentralized distributed data store to keep and deliver information, and has a suite of free software for publishing and communicating on the Web ...
.
History
Syndie has been in development since 2003 and ties in closely with the
I2P network project, which is considered a parent project.
Following the departure of
lead developer Jrandom in 2007, work on syndie was paused. Active development resumed for a period, with the most recent release in 2016.
Concept
Syndie operates in a manner similar to
blogs
A blog (a Clipping (morphology), truncation of "weblog") is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in Reverse ...
,
newsgroups
A Usenet newsgroup is a repository usually within the Usenet system, for messages posted from users in different locations using the Internet. They are discussion groups and are not devoted to publishing news. Newsgroups are technically distin ...
,
forums, and other content tools; it allows one or more authors to privately or publicly post messages. Messages are pushed and pulled to and from archive servers (other peers that choose to be), which are hosted in a variety of anonymous and non-anonymous locations.
Most archive servers are
HTTP
The Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is an application layer protocol in the Internet protocol suite model for distributed, collaborative, hypermedia information systems. HTTP is the foundation of data communication for the World Wide Web, ...
archives hosted inside the
I2P network, but there are syndie archives in
Freenet
Freenet is a peer-to-peer platform for censorship-resistant, anonymous communication. It uses a decentralized distributed data store to keep and deliver information, and has a suite of free software for publishing and communicating on the Web ...
as well as the normal internet. Each archive does not control the content stored on it; by default all messages are pushed and pulled by all participants. In this way, every message is backed up by every user, so should one archive go down, the content can be pushed to a different archive then pulled by other users of that archive. This means that even if all of the users and archives delete a message, as long as one person has it and there is one pushable archive, the message will be redistributed to every user.
Users have the option to delete locally stored messages after a set time, after the local storage consumes a certain amount of
disk space, or by
blacklists of users.
Each user can create multiple identities. Each identity is known as a forum, and users can post into their own or different forums. Each user can control their forum; for example, they may wish to run a blog by not permitting other people to start threads, but allowing them to post comments.
Technical requirements
Syndie is a
Java application and as such can run on any
platform
Platform may refer to:
Technology
* Computing platform, a framework on which applications may be run
* Platform game, a genre of video games
* Car platform, a set of components shared by several vehicle models
* Weapons platform, a system ...
on which
Java
Java (; id, Jawa, ; jv, ꦗꦮ; su, ) is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea to the north. With a population of 151.6 million people, Java is the world's mo ...
is supported; although a
standard widget toolkit
The Standard Widget Toolkit (SWT) is a graphical widget toolkit for use with the Java platform. It was originally developed by Stephen Northover at IBM and is now maintained by the Eclipse Foundation in tandem with the Eclipse IDE. It is an alte ...
is required for the
graphical user interface
The GUI ( "UI" by itself is still usually pronounced . or ), graphical user interface, is a form of user interface that allows User (computing), users to Human–computer interaction, interact with electronic devices through graphical icon (comp ...
versions.
Syndie is primarily a
graphical application, based on the
Standard Widget Toolkit
The Standard Widget Toolkit (SWT) is a graphical widget toolkit for use with the Java platform. It was originally developed by Stephen Northover at IBM and is now maintained by the Eclipse Foundation in tandem with the Eclipse IDE. It is an alte ...
for Java, but it can be run in a
CLI (
headless) mode.
See also
*
Distributed computing
A distributed system is a system whose components are located on different networked computers, which communicate and coordinate their actions by passing messages to one another from any system. Distributed computing is a field of computer sci ...
,
Distributed Networking,
Distributed database
A distributed database is a database in which data is stored across different physical locations. It may be stored in multiple computers located in the same physical location (e.g. a data centre); or maybe dispersed over a network of interconne ...
*
I2P - The development of Syndie and I2P currently overlap.
*
Anonymous P2P
An anonymous P2P communication system is a peer-to-peer distributed application in which the nodes, which are used to share resources, or participants are anonymous or pseudonymous. Anonymity of participants is usually achieved by special routin ...
*
Osiris (Serverless Portal System) - Support P2P web forum.
*
Internet forum
An Internet forum, or message board, is an online discussion site where people can hold conversations in the form of posted messages. They differ from chat rooms in that messages are often longer than one line of text, and are at least tempora ...
References
External links
*
* www.syndie.i2p inside the I2P network
Syndie web forumat I2P forums
Syndieat infoAnarchy.org (web site about
infoanarchism)
Cross-platform free software
Free Internet forum software
Free routing software
Free software programmed in Java (programming language)
Cryptographic software
Anonymity networks
Internet privacy
Free network-related software
I2P
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