I2P support forum

My apologies if this seems unduly alarmist but I have to admit to a growing sense of concern regarding the state of Java development in i2p.

According to the news update for the 2.2.0 release in the router console the Java i2p team and the i2p community have suddenly lost zzz. This is not only tragic but it is truly bizarre. zzz had previously stated on dev/forum at zzz.i2p his approval for the way that zlatin had initially announced his intention to back away from the i2p project. Over the years he has repeatedly lamented the way that jrandom and numerous others have suddenly disappeared without a trace or explanation. For him to suddenly disappear in the same fashion is not only tragic but also somewhat sinister. One hopes that he did not get hit by a bus or suffer some other tragedy.

Not only is this going to be a serious blow to Java router development but also to i2pSnark, numerous plugins and quite frankly all facets of the i2p project. We have lost a prodigious talent, a visionary and one of the coolest heads in the i2p community.

We lost Zlatin quite abruptly last fall which not only affected the router development but also thoroughly killed the immensely promising MuWire project and disadvantaged a large number of other projects. Admittedly Zlatin had given notice that he was going to be moving away in about a year but then suddenly he was gone because of what seemed to be a concerted attack carried out on reddit and against his personal and professional presence outside of i2p. Losing him was a great loss.

idk also seems to have come under considerable pressure from the reddit community in same way that Zlatin had. He also seems to be heavily invested in Go development for the i2p project. He seems to still be around so I am not going to start guessing what his situation is. I am sure that he can speak for himself. Still I have to admit to being to concerned over the situation he has found himself in. Best of luck to you idk.

Any feedback on the current state of i2p development in general an i2p Java in particular would be appreciated.


Sincerely

Xeyed1

I would imagine if ZZZ died then IDK would of said "ZZZ went missing in action" and not "he is stepping away from the project"

I have a fairly good understanding why ZZZ left. Pretty saddened by it, but I can understand why. He was a very talented and chill individual, but sadly he had to leave I suppose.

I mainly feel bad for IDK in this situation who now has a lot more responsibilities to handle, hopefully we get more contributors from this situation but often open source projects lack the people with the right skills. A lot of projects have central figures that do a lot of the development, and the community acts like support/backup.

All we can do is hope people step up to help, but until then I do hope for the best for the rest of the developers, both core and community wise.

raccoondad wrote: ↑16 Mar 2023 18:37 I have a fairly good understanding why ZZZ left. Pretty saddened by it, but I can understand why. He was a very talented and chill individual, but sadly he had to leave I suppose.

Not wanting to pry, just concerned by how out of character this seems. Still concerned that key members of the project seem to be subjected to overwhelming duress.

Sincerely

Xeyed1

The information released by the remaining development team is severely lacking, shrouded in mystery and suspicion.

Was this a developer disagreement? Was he arrested for something? It would be best for the team to share at least some explanation. The project suffers an erosion of confidence when things like this go on.

We won't be discussing any aspect of zzz's situation out of respect for his right to take his presence private. I will speak generally, zzz isn't arrested, he isn't in danger of being arrested, he isn't dead. I understand why you would feel this is an inadequate explanation, but I simply won't be saying more on that subject.

The most important thing is that we remember that I2P is a community project. We all collaborate on what needs to be accomplished. When one of us goes away, another of us has been ready to take on the task at hand. This has happened to I2P before(2008-9), and in far worse ways, and I2P has survived and learned from the experience.

I am now handling the releases, because of all the available hands I am the best qualified to complete the release-related tasks. This is **just one(albeit elaborate, multi-step) job** though, among the many that it takes to keep I2P alive. I2P is a community project, ideas from the community make me happy. Bring me your issues, your suggestions, and most of all your MR's. We've got a great community of experienced I2P admins and developers who will participate in the discussion and evaluation of your ideas. Releases will continue. Development will also continue. I suggest that people who wish to participate directly in development of I2P related code write up their ideas either on this forum, on i2pgit.org as an issue, MR, plugin or application, or on a personal blog and then create a discussion thread on this forum. My own roadmap will be forthcoming.

I also remain invested in the development of go-i2p and the ecosystem of Go applications that make use of the SAMv3 API. However, I will be focusing on only a handful of those apps that have been successful and the remainder will be archived or attended to as-needed. go-i2p development will continue as always, i.e. when I'm not too busy doing something for a router that already talks. Java I2P kind of comes first, for better or worse, because it already has users and I happen to care about them. So it will continue.

eyedeekay wrote: ↑18 Mar 2023 03:50 When one of us goes away, another of us has been ready to take on the task at hand.

Users would surely be happy to see an updated team listing.
- I2P: http://i2p-projekt.i2p/en/contact
- Deu: https://geti2p.net/en/contact

Thanks Igillis, I will get to that this weekend.

That message from eyedeekay is what was missing before today and is the update many were looking for. I find it a good enough explanation.

Consider a new business model, like donations and commissioning programmers to do some core dev as well as a few adjacent projects like MuWire and Bote and a chat client - a few apps that can cover basic I2P tasks. With this change in leadership maybe there's a chance to improve the organizational structure.

FreefallHeavens wrote: ↑19 Mar 2023 18:05 Consider a new business model, like donations and commissioning programmers

Concept: I2P crowdfunding

People create proposals for a feature and get large community support. Have a crowdfund that pools money from the community, then give that money to the developers that fulfill the proposal.

Monero has a similar system where developers can create proposals and get community funding from it

I would imagine it would give incentive to programmers and translators to work more on the project.